Women’s Leisure, What Leisure?

Abstract

The book aims critically to address the issue of women's leisure, drawing upon research data collected during a three-year project on gender and leisure funded jointly by the English Sports Council and the Economic and Social Research Council. The focus of attention is not so much on the amount and type of leisure that women engage in, but on the cultural significance of leisure, an issue which clearly has a gender dimension. A woman's right to freedom in leisure is circumscribed by her employment status and income level, her family situation and most importantly, her lack of status as a woman in a patriarchal society. The book is also concerned with leisure as a site of potential conflict, which highlights the contradictory nature of the 'freedom' and 'pleasure' labels traditionally attached to it. The structure of the book encompasses these broad themes. The first two chapters examine women's leisure from a theoretical and gradually from a socialist feminist perspective. A crucial historical dimension is provided in chapter three. Chapter four reviews existing data on women's leisure patterns, drawing extensively on research from a study of women in Sheffield, and placing it within a broad, comparative context through the use of both quantitative and qualitative evidence. The gendered social control processes operating within leisure are examined in the following chapter. It also examines the centrality of sexuality in negotiations between women and their male partners about women's access to independent leisure outside the home. Chapter seven attempts to draw together some of the positive attempts to improve and extend women's leisure opportunities. The discussion ranges from good practice in leisure provision by public and private agencies, to informal strategies which rely heavily on time-honoured female networks of women friends, relatives and neighbours.