Outdoor recreation and gendered space: the case of men's enthusiasms for hunting, fly-fishing and scuba diving

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore complexities associated with determining gendered recreational spaces in the context of ‘masculine’ outdoor recreational pursuits, using results from two data sets collected in New South Wales, Australia and North Canterbury, New Zealand, 2006–2008. The first data set is based on face-to-face interviews with 26 male recreational hunters, fly-fishers and scuba divers in Sydney and Christchurch. The second is based on a postal survey of North Canterbury recreational deer hunters and ‘Fish and Game’ licence holders. The results confirm that recreational hunting, fly-fishing and non-touristic scuba diving are distinctly ‘gendered’ activities but the ways in which these are linked to gendered space are complex. The activities may be spatially segregated, occurring in rural and often remote locations, but resourcing these activities mostly takes place in domestic settings, i.e. the home, which commonly involve shared spaces. While a number of methodological cautions regarding the two data sets are acknowledged, this study adds to the limited New Zealand literature on outdoor recreation as gendered space and to wider literature on the importance of acknowledging the social contexts, and hence shared spaces, within which ‘individual’ recreational choices are made.