Women's Leisure Research Articles

Claiming control: The recovering alcoholic woman and leisure

Neither the relationship between drinking and leisure throughout an alcoholic person's life course nor the influence of alcohol on a woman's leisure has been extensively systematically studied. The purpose of this project was to explore and describe leisure for recovering alcoholic women who were progressing to long‐term sobriety. The data from nine in‐depth interviews were analyzed within themes: How being female played into descriptions of leisure and the use and abuse of alcohol and the changes and modifications associated with claiming leisure over the alcoholism life course. A grounded theory approach was used, resulting in two conclusions that helped to explain the leisure of women recovering from alcoholism: (a) Social and psychological factors of being female and operational definitions of leisure are similar for recovering alcoholic women as for women in the population in general and (b) women who experience recovery from alcoholism over the life course are engaged in a process of regaining contr...

“YOU LEAVE YOUR TROUBLES AT THE GATE”

Using Connell's theory of gender and power, this article explores the gender regime of lawn bowls, which is played predominantly by older people. The sport is characterized by men's exploitation of women's labor, heterosexual coupledom, and the desexualization of women. A “woman's place” both on and off the playing field is clearly delineated in terms of otherness, especially as an altruistic wife, mother, and grandmother; consequently, men can bowl relatively freely, whereas women's leisure is constrained by their facilitation of men's interests.

What has the feminist movement wrought? A look at mature women's leisure

The authors argue that promoting gender equality without simultaneously promoting changes in capitalist workplace organization and capitalist cultural values systems will likely result in the unintended consequence of less meaningful leisure for mature women of the future. The current problem of declining leisure for both men and women, but especially women, is described, analyzed, and projected to the future. Certain assumptions are made about societal forces: liberal reform feminists continue to alter the system of gender stratification, male advantage continues to decrease, and capitalism continues to develop. The authors use a Marxist‐feminist interpretation to help explain the structure and dynamics of the leisure problem.

Women's leisure: divergence, reconceptualization and change — the case of the Netherlands

This paper consists of two sections. In the first, theoretical, section I explore the questions of divergence and reconceptualization of women's leisure with notions derived from Giddens's structuration theory. In the second section these theoretical notions are used to structure empirical findings from the Netherlands. This results in three different types of women's leisure. The traditional family type has a long history, while the modern family type and the individualistic type are rather new. Each type can be characterised by a specific division of leisure into own time, leisured caring time and leisured labour time and by a specific time-space behaviour. Both the modern family type and the individualistic type are strongly related to women's growing participation in the labour market, which for the former type goes hand-in-hand with an unequal gender division of work. The expectation is that, rather than the individualistic type, the modern family type will become most widespread in the Netherlands a...

The Clockwork Factory: Women and Work in Fascist Italy.

Flashes and glows - the growth of Magneti Taylorismo at Magneti - the organization of the work process Taylorismo at Magneti II - the rationalization of the human factor Taylorismo at Magnet III - beating the clock the workers - composition of the work-force and labour mobility 1919-1940 woman is a perfect machine - gender and work roles have felt like a thief it I'd stayed at home doing nothing - women at work truly humane and political policy - welfare provisions nationalizing the masses - the Dopolavoro and women's leisure I was no hero - political attitudes and the Resistance. Appendices: interviewee profiles additional tables on the composition of the workforce ' population growth and the labour market in Sesto, San Giovanni pay tables initial jobs done by Magneti workers in sample.

Women, gender, leisure and place: towards a more ‘humanistic’ geography of women's leisure

A growing interest in the role of place in social processes has led to a recognition of the need to incorporate these ideas into the study of leisure and recreation. A critique of the traditional geographical approach to the study of leisure and recreation is followed by a brief review of the geography of gender and humanistic geography literature, indicating the possible contribution that some of the perspectives contained in this material can make to our understanding of women's leisure. In conclusion, it is argued that it is only through developing a deeper understanding of the way individuals and groups perceive different places, with their complex mosaics of gender and class relations, that a more complete, more contextual representation of women's leisure can emerge.

The changing world of women and leisure: feminism, ‘postfeminism’ and leisure

This paper focuses on the future of feminist analysis in leisure studies given the recent theoretical debates within postmodernism and the journalistic and academic assumptions that we are in a ‘post‐feminist’ era. This discussion is situated within the discourse of ‘change’ in which a changing world is seen to be throwing into disarray many of our shared taken‐for‐granted assumptions, values and theories. For the purposes of this paper I will be focusing on two major questions concerning feminism and leisure studies. First, I am interested to question whether the world of leisure for women reflects major social and cultural change. Can we identify changes in the lives of women that are having an impact on their leisure in the 1990s? Second, is feminism outdated both as a political movement and as a perspective that informs our theoretical analysis and understanding of leisure in this contemporary world?

Leisure, Work and Gender

In this article, I address the question of the relationship between women's labour market position and their `objective' and `subjective' experience of leisure. With reference to a small-scale empirical study of the social time use of mothers in France, I argue that it is misleading to consider women's leisure experience as being determined by their labour market position. I attempt to show that it could prove more fruitful to examine the complex relationship between women's class and gender identities and their simultaneous experience of work, family and leisure.

Re-entering Leisure: Transition Within the Role of Motherhood

Within leisure literature, a growing body of research is addressing relationship between gender and leisure. This research has focused on understanding meaning of leisure within context of women's lives, constraints encountered by women during their leisure, and importance of women's leisure to their quality of life (cf. Bella, 1989; Deem, 1986; Dixey, 1987; Green, Hebron, & Woodward, 1990; Henderson, 1990; Lenskyj, 1988; Wearing & Wearing, 1988). While some attention has been given to leisure from a life course or life span perspective, little research has examined how changing role demands affect leisure or if and how women in varying life situations perceive changes in leisure and family across life span (Henderson, Bialeschki, Shaw, & Freysinger, 1989).The purpose of this study was to explore relationship between leisure and motherhood from a psychosocial perspective that focused on life course/life span and family life stage. Feminism was used as organizing framework for symbolic interactionist approach to this research.BACKGROUNDFeminism is used as a guiding framework because it can provide alternative view points and data for substantiating those views, can provide broader interpretations of meanings from analyses, can correct biases that have existed, and can provide different ways to study questions about gender and leisure (Bella, 1989; Deem, 1986; Eichler, 1980; Harding, 1986; Henderson & Bialeschki, 1992). As feminist researchers have suggested (Dixey, 1987; Henderson, 1990; Wimbush & Talbot, 1988), an analysis of women's roles in society must be undertaken before women's leisure can be understood. Such an analysis of roles related to motherhood will begin processes of critique, correction, and transformation of way that mothers are viewed within leisure contexts.When feminist perspectives have been applied to family, two major contributions to a revised perception of social construct of family have been noted. First, feminist critique of family has examined historical construction of motherhood within a patriarchal structure (Chodorow, 1978; French, 1985; Lopata & Barnewolt, 1984; Skolnick, 1991; Wearing, 1990). These analyses have provided a non-biological explanation for ascribed gender roles relegated to women during motherhood that presume innate characteristic and universal qualities of nurturance, self-sacrifice, and narrowness of focus. These roles have also relegated women who are mothers to private sphere of home where associated responsibilities have been viewed as less demanding, less valued, and named as women's work (Bridenthal, 1982; Chodorow, 1978; French, 1985; Haas, 1985; Thorne, 1982; Wearing, 1990; Whitson & MacIntosh, 1989). The result has been for twentieth century women who are wives and mothers to center almost exclusively on home roles of physical and emotional care of husband and children and home maintenance rather than on past historical focuses of kin, community, and occupational involvement (Lopata & Barnewolt, 1984).Second, feminist research has encouraged a view of women as individuals within family rather than as mere components of or anchors to social structure of family. Women can be viewed as persons involved in familial and non-familial activities, just as men routinely have been perceived (Bridenthal, 1982). For example, feminist research has challenged myths and misconceptions embodied in fantasy of perfect mother (Bridenthal, 1982; Chodorow & Contratto, 1982) where mother becomes equated with family. As stated by Thorne (1982):Feminists argue that specifics of daily family living (the allocation of tasks, experiences of work and leisure) can not be adequately understood without systematic attention to underlying structures of gender and age. Women's experiences of family have been buried by use of overarching, homogeneous units of analysis such as the household and the family; by a tendency to equate women and family, while men are allowed a separate and individualized status; and by hegemony of male experience of families. …

Gender, Leisure, and Constraint: Towards a Framework for the Analysis of Women's Leisure

This paper examines three approaches to the analysis of women's leisure, and discusses ways in which the ideas and concepts from these different approaches can be integrated. The first and dominant...

Leisure Orientations and Self-Esteem in Women with Low Incomes Who are Overweight

The view that leisure research has been androcentric has precipitated an increased interest in women's leisure. Likewise, recent concerns about socio-cultural diversity have underscored the importa...

Julie Brannen and Peter Moss, Managing Mothers: Dual Earner Households after Maternity Leave, Unwin Hyman, London, 1990. 279 pp. £30.00, paper £10.95 - Linda Hantrais, Managing Professional and Family Life: A Comparative Study of British and French Women, Dartmouth Publishing, Aldershot, 1990. 204 pp. £29.50 - Susan Macrae, Flexible Working Time and Family Life: A Review of Changes, Policy Studies

Julie Brannen and Peter Moss, Managing Mothers: Dual Earner Households after Maternity Leave, Unwin Hyman, London, 1990. 279 pp. £30.00, paper £10.95 - Linda Hantrais, Managing Professional and Family Life: A Comparative Study of British and French Women, Dartmouth Publishing, Aldershot, 1990. 204 pp. £29.50 - Susan Macrae, Flexible Working Time and Family Life: A Review of Changes, Policy Studies Institute, London, 1989. 75 pp. paper £6.95 - Eileen Green, Sandra Hebron and Diane Woodward, Women's Leisure, What Leisure?Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1990. 189 pp. £30.00, paper £8.99. - Volume 21 Issue 2

Women's Leisure in a Resource Industry Town: Problems and Issues

Abstract The study reported seeks to provide a clearer picture of what it means to be a woman in a hinterland community. It also reveals inadequacies in malestream meanings of leisure, in discussions of the pleasures and difficulties that characterize women's lives in such communities. The study involved participant observation over a one year period in a resource industry town in the interior of British Columbia. It also involved individual and collective interviews with women contacted through the local college and a Women's Centre. The discussions revealed two different kinds of barriers to women's leisure in remote communities. At one level, there are the effects of ideologies of familism and patriarchy which work to the disadvantage of women everywhere. However, the evidence also suggests that there are problems that are particular to hinterland communities, or at least are sharper there. These include lack of public transportation or day care, frequent family mobility and poor job opportunities for women, as well as more subjective factors like the strength of familist norms in recreation practices and the politics of being “different” in a community of this size.

Leisure and Women's Identity in Late Adolescence: Constraints and Opportunities

Abstract Current research suggests that leisure is yet another site of female subordination. Nevertheless, discourses on leisure which take into account post-structuralist feminist analyses and the spontaneity of the “I” in identity construction, enable leisure to be perceived as a potential site for the construction of identities which resist male definitions and control of feminine identities and make way for individuality in leisure experience for women and in their construction of identity. This paper examines the relationship between leisure experiences and the subjective construction of gender identity for women in late adolescence. A small sample of first year university students who attended two Sydney universities were interviewed. Diaries of leisure activities and experiences were kept for a week. The results show both the constraints of women's leisure experiences in the construction of “feminine” identity, but also the opportunity through leisure to challenge traditional stereotypes and create...

“Mum's Tennis Day”: The Gendered Definition of Older Women's Leisure

Abstract A group of older women in Australia provide an understanding of how and under what conditions playing sport for leisure was possible when women's lives were defined by gender-divided domestic and capital relations. The paper is based on qualitative data from in-depth interviews with fifteen white, heterosexual women in Western Australia who had played tennis for an average of 40 years. Working and middle class women were represented. It highlights how domestic labour and childcare were accommodated within the tennis culture by structures and practises which developed from the assumption of this as women's primary work. Furthermore, the nature and profile of their participation in the sport tended to be determined by whether or not their husbands also played. The terms “immersed” and “invisible” are used to describe these two scenarios. Whilst being a motive force in the lives of these women, tennis affirmed rather than challenged dominant gender relations.

Women's Leisure: Affiliation, Self-Determination, Empowerment and Resistance?

Abstract Because of leisure's relationship to the quality of life, mental health, and development, access to or opportunity for leisure has been the topic of much study. This research has shown that women across cultures face numerous constraints to leisure—both material and ideological. Leisure is a context of women's oppression and exploitation. However, oppression or hegemony “is never complete, always in the process of being reimposed, and always capable of being resisted” (Weiler, 1988). Indeed leisure, which is defined by relative freedom and rolelessness, may not only be a realm of cultural reproduction but also a context for women's empowerment and cultural resistance. This research explored that question. It was found that the female gender role was not only reproduced in leisure (leisure as affiliation) but also challenged (leisure as self-determination). In self-determined leisure women were empowered to resist falsifying, but also to regain or create, their sense of themselves.

Women, leisure and familism: relationships and isolation in small town Canada

In this paper, a study of a hinterland community in British Columbia serves to raise two kinds of questions about constraints on women's leisure. The first of these concerns ideological constraints. It explores how received ideas about the family and about male leisure have helped to construct women's lack of leisure, and considers whether ‘leisure’ is simply an inadequate and even misleading category for talking about women's lives. The second concerns whether the ‘balance’ that the women in the study talked about instead of leisure is especially problematic in small and isolated communities. It is suggested that although many of the constraints these women cite are instances of forces that oppress women everywhere, women in rural communities can experience them in particularly acute ways. This study of women's leisure is thereby articulated within a growing body of work on rural women.

The Contribution of Feminism to an Understanding of Leisure Constraints

The purpose of this paper is to provide a feminist analysis of the literature concerning leisure constraints. The assumptions of the paper are that a “leisure gap” exists in many women's lives and that by applying feminist perspectives, constraints to women's leisure, as well as constraints to leisure in general, can be better understood. Feminist frameworks which focus on redefining the value of women's lives and making women more visible in society are used to analyze the literature on constraints as it has implications for women's lives. The primary purpose of this paper is to describe how feminism can function as a critique, a corrective mechanism, and a means for transforming our understanding of research on constraints, and specifically, constraints on women's leisure. The paper is addressed to leisure researchers who want to understand how feminism can contribute to a more inclusive understanding of constraints, as well as to feminist researchers who may want to explore how leisure constraints relate to the contexts of women's lives.

Women's leisure time — using time budget data to examine current trends and future predictions

Women's leisure time — using time budget data to examine current trends and future predictions

The Ethic of Care: Leisure Possibilities and Constraints for Women

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to provide a review and an interpretive framework for examining the “ethic of care” (i.e., the activity of relationships) as it offers possibilities and constraints for the leisure of women. The explanatory implications of the ethic of care are useful in further understanding antecedent and intervening constraints to leisure as well as understanding the empowering possibilities of leisure for women. The paper uses a feminist framework to address the concept of an ethic of care, the ways that the ethic has been embodied in leisure behavior for women primarily within the family, the link between an ethic of care and constraints to leisure for women, and the possibilities for the value of an ethic of care in the leisure of all individuals. In describing the experiences of women, the ethic of care is not meant to further dichotomize males and females in leisure but to offer an explanation of women's leisure and to provide some ideas that require further empirical research.