Engendered ideologies and leisure policy in the UK. Part 2: professional ideologies

This article draws upon PhD research to examine the restructuring of engendered ideologies in leisure policy in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and to consider the implications for leisure provision for women. The article is in two parts. In Part 1 the kinds of gender ideologies circulating in leisure policy were outlined; in this second part of the article, the articulation of gender and professional ideologies is examined in order to trace the historical emergence and predominance of particular configurations of ideologies from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s. The research on which this article draws indicates that in the emergence of welfare reformist and community development ideologies in the late 1970s and the mid 1980s respectively, feminist ideologies made a significant impact, but that with the emergence of market ideology in the late 1980s, feminist ideologies were losing ground. It is argued that the predominance of market ideology at a time of economic restraint fuelled by the emergence of post-feminism, is likely to lead to a three-tier system of local leisure provision for women: niche marketed leisure provision for women with substantial resources; mass marketed leisure for women with fewer resources; and even less public leisure provision than previously for the most disadvantaged groups of women.     

‘Thank the ladies for the plates’: The incorporation of women into sport

The extent to which women service the leisure of others can be well illustrated by an analysis of sport. It is argued that gender relations in sport are mediated by male interests and serve to incorporate women for the institution's maintenance and reproduction. Through the ideology of motherhood and wifehood, the domestic labour done by women provides space for others to participate in sport and contributes directly to their sporting effectiveness. This is particularly so concerning women's immediate family members. Some parallels are made to Finch's (1983) work on women's incorporation into men's jobs. Outside the home environment, women's contribution to sport is subscribed not only by their domestic roles, but also by the definition of women as sexual and the vicariousness through which women's lives are frequently lived. The argument presented here is predominantly illustrated by a discussion of gender relations in New Zealand and Australia.     

The Hens are Clucking: Women Performing Gossip in Their Leisure Lives

Using a feminist poststructural lens, this conceptual article aims to trouble patriarchal understandings of gossip as a devalued dimension of women's talk. To accomplish this aim, I focus on decentering three dominant discourses tied to women's gossip that position gossip as idle talk, based on the personal lives of others, and trivial. In particular, I consider the ways power is part of women's performances of gossip and how women can use gossip to construct, maintain, and resist gendered subjectivities as part of their leisure. This article also aims to illustrate the need for leisure researchers, and in particular feminist leisure researchers, to pay closer attention to the topic of women's gossip and the complex and messy connections between gossip, women's talk, and women's leisure lives.     

Leisure,gender and family: the influence of social policy

A number of authors have recently called for reconsideration of the way in which gender and the family are investigated within leisure studies. This paper proposes that future analyses should include more explicit recognition of the ideological and practical influence of social policy on contemporary gender relations. The paper suggests that social policy has particular significance for debates within leisure studies, about the relationship between men and women's market and domestic labour, and their access to leisure. The paper investigates the influence of social policy on male and female adult life patterns through comparative analysis of social policy interventions and labour market outcomes in the economically advanced nations. It focusses on the policy stance in relation to paid work, especially maternal and paternal employment. It is shown that ‘family-related’ social policies universally support fathers' employment, but vary in the extent to which they encourage mothers' labour market activity. The implications of this for gender differentiation in leisure are explored through analysis of cross-national data for male and female sports participation in Europe. The analysis shows a strong correlation between gender discrimination in family-related social policy, and differentials in male-female sports participation rates. The paper next considers the implications of policy intervention for divergence within the female population. A detailed case study of the UK examines how family-related policy may differentially affect women in different socio-economic situations. The paper concludes that whether family-related policies encourage women to see themselves primarily as caregivers within the family unit, or as citizens with individualized rights, is likely to affect both their sense of entitlement to personal leisure and their ability to access it.     

Exploring intersections of physicality and female‐only canoeing experiences1

The benefits of single‐gender experiences for females have been discussed in a variety of contexts, including education, sport and outdoor recreation. In both the discourses of female‐run outdoor adventure travel programs providing such experiences, and the leisure studies and outdoor education literatures, claims are made about the distinct social environment created on such trips and the positive outcomes for females undertaking them. Absent from these discourses is reference to empirical research exploring women's perceptions of such experiences, thereby allowing one to evaluate the merit of such claims. In what would initially appear to be an observation in a completely different vein, there is also a relative dearth of scholarly examinations within leisure and recreational studies of women's lived‐body experiences of their physicalities through active outdoor recreation, and the potentially empowering effects of them. This paper seeks to draw out the connections between these seemingly disparate observations through a qualitative examination of women's experiences of female‐only wilderness canoeing. While the reasons articulated by the women for undertaking such an experience did not explicitly identify issues related to their physicalities, clearly these issues resonated with and held implications for their experiences of them. This, in turn, provides substantiation for claims regarding the importance of the provision of all‐female outdoor experiences.     

Community (Dis)connection Through Leisure for Women in Prison

This article examines incarcerated women's leisure and re-entry into community. Framed in creative analytic practice, two poems reflect two major themes: (1) women's experiences of disconnection from community prior to and deepened by experiences in prison and (2) leisure and community re-entry, which describes complex meanings of leisure for women in prison and implications for return to community. These poems elucidate six often incongruous facets of leisure experience. Structures embedded in leisure service provision stigmatize and limit rather than encourage opportunities for incarcerated women to make personal choices regarding leisure. Leisure also provides contexts of relationship and humanity for women as they re-enter community.     

The changing regulation of public leisure provision

There is much current international interest in the effectiveness, efficiency and economy of alternative mechanisms of public service delivery. In the UK, research has concentrated on Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT), both in terms of its impacts and the wider socio-political project which it represents. It has been argued that CCT has been less about getting the private sector into public leisure provision than it has about commercializing the public sector. However, it is evident that the ‘externalization’ of public leisure management functions has been encouraged by the legislation, meaning that a new marketplace has been created, characterized by the emergence of a number of private sector leisure management companies. With the potential advent of a new Best Value (BV) regime in place of CCT, it is argued that the significance of these companies could increase considerably. Here, this new dynamic of private capital into public leisure provision is analysed, through reviewing its structural nature in the context of the wider social reproduction of capitalism. In locating the analysis within the field of Regulation Theory, the paper makes explicit the exogenous structural nature of the dynamic, particularly in its need for legitimation through the annexation of change through social norms, mechanisms and institutions. The paper consequently argues that while the primary project of CCT may have been about the commercialization of the public sector, the underlying priority of government has been much more associated with the need to find new and acceptable ways of reinforcing the hegemonic message of consumerbased capitalism. It is concluded that the BV regime, far from challenging this orthodoxy, is likely to further legitimate it.     

‘All in a day's leisure’: gender and the concept of leisure

This paper suggests that leisure conceptualized as time or activity alone poses problems for gender. The underlying idea of leisure as freely-chosen, self-actualizing experience is presented as a basis for broadening the concept. Both the limitations and the freedoms inherent in the leisure experience of women and men may be explained through such a concept of leisure.

This concept leads us to explore new areas of literature, in particular feminist analyses of power. Women's lack of autonomy in comparison with men is highlighted. Finally, further research and future policy can be enhanced by this broader concept of leisure.     

Anatomy is not destiny: A feminist analysis of the scholarship on women's leisure

Abstract

The extent of the scholarship on women has accelerated over the past 20 years, yet many questions remain unanswered concerning what is known about women and their leisure behavior. Social science research about women and leisure that analyzes the interaction between the environment and biological sex has aided in understanding leisure behavior more completely and has enabled researchers to conclude that anatomy is not destiny. An analysis focusing on the critical corrective, and transformative aspects of feminist research provides a way to examine the trends in research on women specifically concerning women and leisure. The purpose of this article is to examine the foundations of the emerging scholarship on women and leisure, especially the research on gender differences, from a feminist perspective. The emerging trends in feminist research and the “state of the art” concerning scholarship on women as it is occurring in other disciplines is examined in light of how research in other fields may offer guidance for leisure research.     

Gender Relations and Sport for Development in Colombia: A Decolonial Feminist Analysis

Abstract

Playing sports has long been a taboo for women in Colombia, yet new spaces for female participation have emerged in recent decades. This article explores the gendered nature of sport in Colombia through the lived experiences of female participants involved in a local Sport for Development and Peace organization. Building on ethnographic fieldwork and a decolonial feminist perspective, the authors examine how cultural experiences of physicality are gendered but are potentially changing in the context of leisure practices and how this may shape power relations. Although more girls and women are participating in masculine leisure pursuits, there are critical limitations to social change and female participants demonstrate the coloniality of gender in action.     

Segregation of women in tourism employment in the APEC region

Women represent a majority of the tourism workforce globally, yet they remain under-represented in management roles and over-represented in part-time/casual work and low paid jobs. Prior research suggests women in employment, generally, and in tourism employment, specifically, experience gender discrimination, labour market and workplace segregation, work/family conflict, and other barriers to their employment and career progression. This paper presents results from an international survey of women's employment in the tourism sector, and analyses 363 responses representing the views of employers, employees, government officials, non-government organization representatives and academics across a range of tourism industries in 21 APEC member economies. The results reveal continued segregation of women across the economies, but also highlight national cultural barriers and intersectionality which affect women's employment and progression in tourism employment. Human resource management strategies, policy interventions, and implications to reduce gender segregation, increase representation in management, and provide equal employment opportunities are presented.     

Feminism and the Physical Cultural Studies Assemblage: Revisiting Debates and Imagining New Directions

Abstract

The relationship between feminism and PCS is complex and an exemplar of the politics of knowledge production. We begin this paper by detailing the evolving relationship between feminism and PCS, and identify two key ways that feminist sport scholars have responded to PCS. Whereas one group has rejected PCS outright, another is reappropriating PCS for their own purposes. Aligning with the latter, in the remainder of the paper we offer one of many possible imaginings of a feminist interpretation of the PCS assemblage. More specifically, we briefly outline how a feminist engagement with some of the key tenets of PCS facilitated new understandings of New Zealand women’s embodied experiences of netball, includingMāori women.In so doing, we reveal what a FPCS approach might look like in practice and highlight ways that feminist scholars have, and can continue to, contribute to the PCS agenda through embodied, theoretical, reflexive, political, contextual and culturally-specific research.     

Dischord and Dissonance in the Leisure Studies Polyphony: A Response to Fox and Klaiber

This study examines females' participation in the male-dominated sport of motorcycling. Group interviews with female motorcyclists explore the meaning of this leisure activity in their lives and various factors that facilitate their participation. A grounded-theory approach reveals five sources of empowerment that women gain by participating in motorcycling. This study demonstrates the role facilitators play in creating and cultivating sources of empowerment. It also exposes how feelings of guilt, vulnerability, and concern about societal images can undermine women's feelings of empowerment. “Girl power” represents women's attempts to redefine femininity in a way that embraces the positive aspects of both femininity and masculinity and resists negative stereotypes that restrict women's choices of leisure pursuits.     

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 and that therefore unequal gender relations in the labour, caring and leisure domain will endure.     

Northern Ireland: the politics of leisure in a divided society

The public provision of leisure services and the impact which this has on the community has become a political issue. Nowhere is this more the case than in Northern Ireland where economic and social problems, together with the Troubles, led to a massive increase in central government's sponsorship of public leisure provision in the 1970s. This was a political gesture made more political in the manner through which district councils and local government officials discharged their devolved responsibilities and the way in which local communities appropriated leisure facilities. The resultant pattern of leisure provision reflects existing community boundaries and, as such, reinforces rather than ameliorates sectarian divisions.     

Body image as a leisure constraint: Examining the experience of aerobic exercise classes for young women

Abstract

Previous research has shown that women, and especially young women, in this culture experience pressure to be thin. Although considerable research has been directed toward the investigation of body image and its relationship to psychological health and self‐image, the impact of body image on leisure behavior has not been adequately addressed, nor has body image received much attention as a potential leisure constraint. The purpose of this study was to investigate ways in which body image might function as a constraint to young women's participation in aerobic exercise classes. The study used both quantitative and qualitative methods, including a survey of 190 women undergraduate students and in‐depth interviews with a sub‐sample of 11 students. The qualitative data are the main focus of this analysis. The data indicated that body image did not seem to prevent participation or constrain levels of participation in aerobics. Nevertheless, body image concerns were shown to constrain the enjoyment of aerobics as a leisure activity, and this reduction of enjoyment was related to the clothing worn for aerobics and to competition over appearance and body weight among participants. The findings also showed that body image functioned as a constraint into participation in that body‐image‐related concerns were a major motivating factor exerting pressure on young women to participate in aerobics. In sum, the study suggested that body image can constrain leisure in some situations, although it is not a constraint in the traditional sense of preventing participation. The implications of these findings for the conceptualization of leisure constraints were discussed. Furthermore, some practical implications for the provision of aerobics classes were provided.     

Engendered ideologies and leisure policy in the UK. Part 1: gender ideologies

I don't quite yawn when I see another project about the problems women face but I think to myself ‘This ground has been heavily walked over. We know it. It's been written about. It's been sung about. It's been acted about and it's been painted and performed about.’ It is very well worn territory and I'm now thinking ‘What next? How do you use that raised awareness and move on?’ (Keeper, arts and museums). This article draws upon PhD research to examine the restructuring of engendered leisure policy ideologies in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and to consider the implications for leisure provision for women. The article is in two parts. In Part 1, a typology of ideologies is developed in order to outline the kinds of gender ideologies circulating in leisure policy. Part 2 of the article examines the articulation of gender and professional ideologies, and the configurations of ideologies which were emerging as predominant at a time of political and economic restructuring.     

Understanding Event Sport Tourism Experiences of Support Partners: A Research Note

The purpose of this research reflection is to set the stage for a more detailed research agenda in exploring event sport tourism experiences of support partners (SPs) during events. Using photo elicitation, the article presents a preliminary empirical case study. Visual materials were assembled by three female participants to interrogate how SPs experience “spectator space” and explore the processes that produced those experiences, an area of study that remains relatively unexplored in leisure research. Initial findings show how waiting to see the triathlete can be anxiety-provoking, but the release of emotion when smiles are exchanged constitutes core activities of being there. However, there are more questions than answers, and there is a need for further inquiry. Suggestions for future research on the impact of serious leisure on intimate others are given.     

‘It’s a Harsh Fact of Life with the RMA’: neo-liberalism and the realities of community sports facility development by the private sector in New Zealand

Despite the importance of facilities as primary sites for delivery of leisure and sport services, there has been a scarcity of academic literature on the provision of community sports facilities and the processes through which they are developed. In particular, this paper provides empirical analysis of leisure facility provision with a focus on practice and experience of policy and planning actors. By employing a case study approach and semi-structured interviews, the study identified a sharp contrast between the discourse of neo-liberalism and the realities of a highly regulated environment for the private sector under a national legislation of New Zealand, namely the Resource Management Act 1991. While both public and private actors recognised benefits of the resource consent process in mitigating the negative environmental impacts and facilitating public input, the findings also revealed its potential impediments to both private and philanthropic developments and their potential resultant benefits to communities and social citizenship due to its costly, restrictive and undifferentiated nature. Consequently, the paper suggests that future research needs to examine empirical evidence of how social citizenship and citizen engagement are enhanced by both public and private sectors through planning and development of community sports facilities and services.