Work and Leisure

Introduction 7differences in men’s and women’s patterns of leisure participation and nonparticipation,there was little by way of explanation of these differences, andwhen work–leisure relationships were discussed, the assumed model of workwas the full-time paid job. During the intervening three decades, one of themajor social and economic changes in Western societies is that substantiallymore women have full-time and part-time paid jobs; however, they also continueto shoulder the bulk of the burden of unpaid work in childcare andhomecare. In Chapter 4 Judy White describes the developing feminist consciousnessand epistemology which arose during the 1970s to challenge the‘malestream’ view and which led to the emergence of substantial research onwomen’s experience of leisure and work, paid and unpaid. But, as in otherareas of social life, while there has been noticeable change in women’s patternsof work and leisure, many of the fundamentals remain unchanged.White notes a parallel impasse in feminist leisure research concerning desirablefuture theoretical, empirical and political directions, and concludes thatthe emancipatory battles which emerged in the 1970s are not over.Economic forces have been the driver of change which has produced suchsignificant social and cultural change since the mid-1970s, with monetarismemerging to challenge unbridled Keynesianism in the world of economicpolicy and the rise of the political ‘New Right’ based on ‘economic rationalism’.In Chapter 5, Chris Gratton and Peter Taylor provide an economicperspective on the changing relationship between work and leisure overrecent years. The economic theory of ‘income/leisure trade-off’ posits thatwork and leisure time operate in connected markets, mediated in particularby the wage rate: workers choose more or less work depending on their owndesires and needs and on the going wage rate – that is, what employers willpay the worker to give up an hour of leisure time. The changes seen in workpatterns in Britain over recent years do not, however, conform to the predictionsof the trade-off model. Gratton and Taylor conclude that the model, asnormally promulgated, is too simplistic and ignores the power of employersin the market situation and the social realities of the labour market.In Chapter 6 A. J. (Tony) Veal reviews three research traditions which haveaddressed the issue of the relationship between work and leisure since themid-1970s or so, namely, first, the early work of Wilensky and Parker indevising typologies of work–leisure relationships, second, research on therelationships between leisure participation and occupation-based socioeconomicgroups, and third, the phenomenon of occupational communities.Although these research traditions were largely eclipsed during the 1980s and1990s, by theoretical approaches and concerns which were seen to be moreintimately related to broader social theory, the chapter suggests that theywere, in fact, more theoretically informed than they are often given credit forand, further, that all three traditions provide a legitimate basis for currentconcerns in the study of leisure.If it was ever the case that the study of leisure was insufficiently connected