Diane M. Samdahl
University of Georgia
Paper presented at the 21st Annual Conference
of the National Women’s Studies Association, Boston, June 14-18, 2000.
In preparing for
this presentation I realized that I’ve been studying leisure for almost
25 years.I started out in sociology,
interested in the social dimensions of recreational activity.Today
we might call that the sociology of leisure.Back
then, in the mid-1970s when I was working on my masters degree, no faculty
member in sociology saw leisure as a valuable topic for social inquiry.They
tried hard to direct me towards the sociology of sport, and when it became
evident that I had no interest in sport they decided I didn’t have what
it takes to be a sociologist and they terminated my degree.
Today I believe strongly in the power of leisure as a social institution.What I see now, that was only a glimmer of understanding when I tried to justify my interests to those old-guard sociologists, is that the shape and structure of leisure is firmly entrenched in broader social systems so that leisure acts to insidiously reinforce the status quo.When I matched my interest in leisure with a growing understanding of feminist theory, I also began to see that leisure is an important realm for reproduction of or resistance to normalizing gendered discourse.That is what I want to address in my talk today.
I’ve arranged my comments to emphasize three points.First, I want to validate leisure by discussing it as a social institution.Second, I want to show how the institution of leisure has hegemonic characteristics.And third, I want to hint at the power of leisure as a site for feminist resistance.These comments will serve as an introduction to the more detailed discussions that Susan and Sharon will offer.
In talking about leisure as a social institution I’m hoping to challenge your pre-existing views of leisure as free time, or recreational activity, or leisure as the opposite of work.Our society has deluded us into thinking that leisure refers to those left over periods that occur after everything else has been done.In fact, the very definition of leisure as “free time” implies that it has no value.My argument is that leisure is particularly powerful exactly because we dismiss it so easily without giving it much reflective thought.
Sociologists define a social institution as a structured pattern of opportunities and behaviors that fulfills an important social function. Social institutions include obvious structures like educational or medical systems as well as more invisible patterns such as the normative structures for family and religion.When I speak of leisure as a social institution I am saying that cultural factors shape the way that leisure is structured in our society, so that our leisure options and choices serve a broader social purpose.
Let me share two very different theories that portray leisure as a social institution (and I’ll forewarn you that these are not feminist theories.They are traditional leisure theories but they illustrate my point that leisure is more than meaningless free time.)
A functionalist perspective, supported by Dumazedier and others, claims that modern forms of leisure emerged to serve unique needs in post-industrialized society.With industrialization, people had increased mobility and moved into large, anonymous cities.According to this perspective, people lost connection to their smaller communities and traditional institutions that were based on community—things like family and religion—became less meaningful (and, I’ll add, less powerful).As a result, people began to look elsewhere to meet the basic needs that had been served through those institutions.In this environment, leisure emerged as a new social forum that provided meaningful engagement and an alternative sense of community. Leisure flourished as a social institution because it also supported autonomy and independence which were becoming increasingly valued by our society.I think for many of us, leisure does serve as a way to ground ourselves, to find meaningful engagement or to make connections to others like traditional forms of community used to provide.Thus, there may be some truth in this theory.
An alternative discussion of leisure as a social institution comes out of Marxist theory and highlights the consumptive, market-oriented nature of leisure.The fact is, leisure and discretionary spending drive our economy. Looking forward to the weekend or to a two-week vacation, or working hard to build a good retirement fund, are powerful incentives that turn people into loyal employees.On top of that, leisure spending provides a necessary outlet for billions of dollars of products and services produced by our economy each year.Marxist theorists scoff at the idea that leisure is a forum for autonomous meaning and self-expression; instead, they argue that leisure behaviors and leisure interests are controlled by the market and serve to justify the broader interests of capitalism.
These are simply two of many different theoretical perspectives that describe the role of leisure in broader society.If either of these explanations caught your interest or seemed to have a shred of truth, then I’ve met my goal of getting you to think about leisure as more than a meaningless period of free time.Like other social institutions, leisure is shaped by and serves a broader purpose in society.
If we accept the fact that leisure is a social institution, the next obvious question is to examine the ways that it functions in society.This is where feminist theory has been most helpful.Feminist leisure researchers first began by exploring the differences between women’s and men’s leisure and this work revealed a startling fact—leisure, as our culture defines it, does not apply to many women’s lives!Our traditional thinking makes a dichotomy between work and leisure:Leisure is that period of time that occurs after work (in the evenings, on the weekends, or during vacation) when people are relaxed and free to do whatever they want.Exploration of women’s lives, however, quickly showed that many women cannot segment their day into periods of work and non-work.In fact, women are often busiest in their roles as wives and mothers during evenings, weekends, and vacations; rather than having leisure for themselves, they are busy servicing the leisure of others during those periods of “free time.”It quickly became clear that our traditional concept of leisure was extremely androcentric.
Feminist researchers have revealed many ways that leisure serves to maintain the gendered status quo. On one level we can simply look at the provision of public leisure services.In each of our communities, public dollars—tax dollars—are being used to maintain golf courses, ball fields, hiking trails, and a variety of other recreational settings.There is a strong gender bias (as well as a race and class bias) in who actually uses these services.The fact is, women spend much of their leisure in the privacy of their homes or in commercial spaces like shopping malls; they have not demanded or been served by the public recreation agencies that spend their tax dollars.In an interesting article about a small Canadian town, Hunter and Whitson (1991) critically analyzed the presumably objective decision to build a hockey rink instead of installing sidewalks along the semi-rural roads of the community.The rink, of course, was used primarily by children and men; the sidewalks would have been used by women and would have facilitated networking and interaction among neighbors. By building the hockey rink instead of the sidewalks, this community effectively kept women in their place.In most of our communities, the best public support for women’s leisure would be to maintain childcare centers instead of golf courses, but we all know how unlikely that would be.
When I speak about this to undergraduate women they often argue that they have equal access to public recreation.They claim that I’m speaking about their mother’s world, and that things have changed.Secretly I always hope they’re right, but the facts show otherwise.For example, feminist research on outdoor recreation highlights the ways that the outdoors is gendered terrain.Women are free to go hiking and camping, and they are doing so in increasing numbers, but they enter the woods with a very different attitude than men.The fear of violence, and the steps and precautions women take to avoid confrontation, clearly show that women know they are entering men’s territory when they venture into the outdoors.
The hegemonic power of leisure extends beyond women’s
limited access to public recreation.More
powerful, and more insidious, are the many messages that women receive
in leisure settings that tell them how they should be—or who
they should be.I emphasize the insidious
nature of this because I believe we are oftentimes most vulnerable in our
leisure.We believe that leisure
gives us freedom to do what we want and to be our “true selves”; thus,
the messages we receive back during leisure are taken to heart as representative
of who we really are.I’m thinking
here of young girls who spend their leisure in body-shaping activities
such as aerobics, or women who spend all of their time in support of their
children’s soccer and ballet.Visible
behind these activities is a strongly dominant gender discourse that defines
“woman” in traditional and restrictive ways.No
doubt these activities are satisfying and the women who engage in them
receive positive social support for their efforts.The
hidden consequence, however, is the complicity with which these actions
affirm and reinforce traditional gendered discourse that defines women
in physical or subservient roles.
Hegemony (Gramsci, 1985) refers to the ways that power and privilege are maintained through implicit, unquestioning acceptance of “the way things are.”To speak about the hegemonic power of leisure is to show how leisure acts to reify and maintain the status quo.Feminist theory has raised important questions about who is served at whose expense in our traditional forms of leisure, and has highlighted the hegemonic control that resides in women’s leisure opportunities.
One critique of theories that describe the hegemonic structures of society is that the enormity of those systems makes it difficult to envision change.In a wonderfully graphic metaphor, Wearing called this the “squashed ant” view of women’s lives.With patriarchy and hegemony and the entirety of our social world acting to keep women in her place, what’s a woman to do?The answer, of course, is to discount those theories or to at least modify them so they more effectively capture the forms of empowerment that exist in women’s lives.Recent work on leisure as a site of resistance is doing just that.
Wearing introduced the idea of leisure as resistance in a study of new first-time mothers.She described the dilemma these women faced, including guilt whenever they left the baby with someone else, as a clash between competing discourses.On the one hand, we have a discourse of motherhood that includes expectations such as a mother will always be available for her baby, and a baby’s needs come before the mother’s needs.On the other hand, we have an increasingly prevalent discourse of leisure that says every individual has a right to periods of autonomy and independence.Confronted with these two contradictory messages, first-time mothers had to negotiate a compromise that offered some sort of resolution.According to Wearing, this process of compromise began to challenge the traditional discourse about motherhood in ways that would eventually lead to a newly legitimated view of what a mother should be—a new discourse that said mothers could take time for themselves without feeling guilty.
Another example offers a more vivid picture of leisure as a site of resistance.In many situations of domestic abuse, a man obtains control over a woman by increasingly restricting her free time activities.He starts out by expecting her to give up her recreational pursuits and join him in his; later she’s cut off from any engagement with family and friends; and eventually she is strictly controlled and must account for every action while outside the house.His violence is often a punitive reaction when she has had too much fun or stayed out just a little too late.The nature of his violence is a powerful testimony to the threat that is posed by her leisure involvements.Those men know that leisure is not just meaningless activity; they understand that leisure is a context that potentially fosters resistance.I won’t reduce the complexities of domestic violence to a simplistic statement about leisure, but the above example highlights the need to reclaim leisure as one action in a woman’s attempt to resist control.
Today, women are reclaiming leisure in many different ways.The growing interest in women-only vacations has fostered a whole new industry that provides everything from llama treks to tours of France for groups comprised only of women.Pressure from sportswomen has finally forced the hunting and fishing industry to manufacture clothing and equipment that is sized for a woman’s body.Even Nike’s successful campaign to sell running shoes to women has had a secondary effect of promoting women’s physicality.In many contexts and in many ways, leisure is becoming a forum where gendered discourse is confronted and resisted.
My comments have been intended as an introduction that paves the way for Susan’s and Sharon’s presentations.But our argument, collectively, is that leisure is a context where cultural ideology is constituted, transmitted, and transformed.As such, leisure is a feminist concern that deserves increased attention from women’s studies scholars.