The impact of vacations on urban women's well-being from the perspective of feminist urbanism

Abstract

Vacations are known to foster well-being outcomes, yet few researchers have accounted for the influence of individual attributes such as gender, residential setting, or cultural context. As a result, there is a noticeable gap in the well-being literature concerning well-being outcomes for female travelers whose subjectivities have been shaped in as well as by their residential environment (urban) and culture. Using qualitative inquiry informed by the feminist urbanism perspective, this study uncovered urban Chinese women's cognitive representations of well-being outcomes from vacations. Findings revealed that vacations provide liberation from cultural constraints, boosting of social bonds and relationship building, enabling reflection on life and personal identity, and fostering learning and personal growth. Our findings, which integrated a feminist urbanism perspective that allowed for the influence of context (e.g., culture) as well as gender, partly overlap with existing research but also introduced new cognitive representations of well-being that advance well-being research.