Cronología de los sucesos relevantes

From the late 1970s, feminist accounts of women's leisure began to emerge as a significant, if still marginal, contribution to the theoretical writing and empirical data available on leisure. Such accounts have their roots in the broader development of feminist research within the social* sciences. Whilst there is certainly no single or unified feminist approach, it is possible

to distinguish certain perspectives, purposes and aims which characterise feminist work in this area. Firstly, all share the position that women are oppressed by gender and patriarchy, and:

'are fully committed to a theoretical and political analysis which will point to ways of overcoming the subordinating effects of gender relations and patriarchy.'

(Deem 1988, p. 10)

Within this context, importance is placed on enabling women to represent their experiences in their own terms (Oakley 1974, Pollert 1981). This has involved a critique of male dominated mainstream academia, arguing that the dominant approaches within the social sciences have not only largely failed to take account of gender and women's experiences, but also that their singularly masculinist perspective has resulted in a tendency to study social life as if it were constituted of separate and mutually exclusive categories of experience such as work, the family and so on. Whilst work such as that of Parker (op. cit.) seeks to examine the relationship between the two categories of work and leisure, they are still seen as distinct, if related, areas of experience, and the relationship of leisure to life experiences other than paid work is hardly considered. Even the most cursory analysis of women's lives indicates that a more useful and relevant approach involves looking at aspects of women's lives in relation to the nature of their lives as a whole. Such an holistic approach has immediately discernible advantages for the study of leisure, given that the structure of most women's lives

make it pointless for researchers to adhere to a theoretical approach which cannot take account of overlapping activities or time which is not unambiguously either work or leisure.

Feminist interest in leisure studies, and in the related area of the sociology of sport, has opened up new areas of analysis associated with those issues and preoccupations with which the women's movement has concerned itself. From this perspective,

leisure and sport are identified as politica issues, and gender inequalities are seen as at least as significant an area of study as class divisions, in some analyses more so. A useful summary of the pioneering and subsequent work in this field can be found in Deem (1988).

Feminist theorists have been able to develop their analyses by drawing upon a range of empirical evidence which indicates that men and women do engage in different kinds of leisure activities, such as the the General Household Surveys of 1973 and 1983 (used in Green, Hebron and Woodward 1987 and 1990). Men report themselves to be involved in more leisure activities and to participate more frequently than women, especially in activities which take place outside of the home. Official explanations of w o m e n ’s low participation rates have been couched in terms of women being recreationally disadvantaged or socially and geographically deprived. This perspective was subject to a critique by Talbot (1979) in a paper comissioned by the Sports

Council/SSRC Joint Panel on Sport and Leisure Research (who would later fund the Sheffield Leisure and Gender Project). Talbot collated existing research findings which indicated the significance of gender as a structuring variable in leisure, and made a number of pertinent suggestions for future research. Feminist analyses of leisure reject the perspective which sees women as a neglected group whose ’problems' are open to resolution through piecemeal changes in social policy, a point which was made forcefully by Stanley in her important and influential paper on the ’problem’ of women and leisure (1980). What has begun to emerge is a political analysis of leisure and gender linking individual women's experiences to wider social processes (Wimbush 1986, Deem 1986, Wimbush and Talbot 1988, Green, Hebron and Woodward 1990). Leisure in these approaches is not just a question of facilities or institutions; rather it is an integral part of social relations, which are characterised by inequality between men and women.

One specific area within the study of women's leisure has been the analysis of women's experiences of and participation in sport. Whilst this is not a major part of this study, the work of one author should be briefly considered here. Jennifer Hargreaves, writing from a Marxist-feminist position, has produced work which situates her investigation of women and sport within the context of women's broader leisure - and life -

experiences (1982, 1989). Important to her analysis is the social construction of gender identities, and she insists upon the usefulness of the concept of hegemony in understanding gender divisions within sport and leisure. Her work has many points of contact with the cultural studies approaches outlined below, and indeed with this study.

A small but significant strand in feminist analysis, and one which perhaps indicates a willingness to break down some traditional barriers between academic disciplines, has been work which aims to bring a historical understanding to w o m e n ’s contemporary position and experience (Stanley 1988, Green, Hebron and Woodward 1990). Stanley notes:

'Feminist leisure studies research which looks at women's lives much more 'in the round' in a contemporary setting is to be welcomed. However, this needs to be matched by an historical examination of women's lives and experiences. Neither 'leisure' nor 'work' are static features of women's lives...we. cannot adequately understand now, if we do not know something about its relationship with then and about how the one became the other.'

(Stanley 1988, p.18)

Feminist accounts share a perspective which challenges the view that social class is the major division affecting access to and participation in leisure, identifying gender and race as equally significant - and interrelated - divisions (Griffin et a l . 1982). Such accounts are concerned to identify and analyse areas of common ground and areas of divergence between women. They recognise that whilst women from different class positions may be

unequally constrained by income levels and resources, for example, they are likely to share common constraints resulting from their position as women.

The critique of male bias in empirical work within the social sciences has had implications for the development of appropriate research methodologies (Graham 1983, Oakley 1981, Roberts 1981). With regard to the study of women's leisure, the desire to understand the social meanings which women attach to leisure has led feminist researchers to select qualitative methods such as semi-structured or unstructured interviews and participant observation (Deem 1986, Mason 1988, Wimbush 1986). Such methodological tools encourage research subjects to 'tell their own stories' in their own terms (Graham op. cit.), as will be discussed more fully in Chapter 4. A number of ethnographic studies using this approach have provided rich evidence on the leisure experiences of schoolgirls, young working class women and elderly women (McRobbie 1978, Hobson 1978, McCabe 1981, Griffiths 1988, Mason 1988), whilst simultaneously highlighting the white male bias inherent in much existing subcultural analysis.

These developments have not only made visible women's experiences of leisure; they have also indicated the need for leisure studies as a discipline to take account of gender. Bringing women's leisure into the academic field of vision had made theorising on the basis of a straightforward work-leisure dichotomy untenable.

Instead, what is beginning to emerge are more sophisticated analyses which see both work and leisure as social processes involving degrees of freedom and constraint (see 2.2). Feminist research has highlighted the fact that women's lack of time for and access to leisure cannot be adequately explained by recourse to the notion of individual choice, nor can such inequalities in relation to leisure be resolved by piecemeal initiatives. Rather it is coming to be recognised that the structuring of leisure by gender is one fundamental aspect of the social relations of patriarchal capitalism.