Work and Leisure

Work and leisure: themes and issues 221women’s approaches to reconciling the interests of ‘self’ with those of ‘family’.As individuals, men and women appear to give different priority to thework, family, leisure domains of their collective life, while simultaneouslystriving to achieve a mutually satisfying joint lifestyle, which may hinder theintegration of work and non-work activities. Kay argues that leisure is asignificant domain of relative freedom and a primary site in which men andwomen can actively construct responses to social change. She considers thatthe recognition of this can contribute, at both a conceptual and empiricallevel, to a holistic understanding of contemporary lived experience; but thatit raises the question about the extent to which we can realistically talk offamilies, collectively, being equipped to resolve the work-life dilemma.Ferdman (1999) calls for increased attention to race, ethnicity and cultureas key variables in the study of gender in organisations. Ferdman argues thatresearch into gender is predominantly into the experience of white people,who can be blind to the priviliges carried by a white person in a whitedominatedsociety. He notes, for example, that in the United States theincrease in the proportion of working mothers is primarily a white phenomenon,because large numbers of black women have always worked outside thehome. In a similar vein, it is noted that the financial advantage that whitemales have over females is not as evident for men of colour. Ferdman pointsto a growing literature documenting how the meaning and experience ofgender is culturally defined in the context of particular societies, social settingsand ethnicities. He considers that gender, as a set of beliefs and practicesfor structuring human experience, is relatively meaningless outside a particularcultural context; highlighting the problems inherent in attempting togeneralise about all women and men.A false universalism has also been identified in sport and leisure. Jarvie andReed (1997) are critical of European intellectual constructions of racism,which they claim have often been applied in a devastating manner. Theyargue that black feminist thought has yielded a radical critique of both thesociology of sport and white European feminism (Plowden 1995).These views on gender, work and leisure echo Judy White’s call in Chapter4 for the need to listen to many voices; arguing against trends to establish a‘grand’ theory, which can ‘travel’ across academic disciplines. She calls for areturn to feminist scholarship as research and writing grounded in people’sexperience, which does not claim to be universal, but which, nevertheless, isnot purely individual, but has relevance for policy in leisure and work.Class, employment, leisure and incomeWhile individuals from a range of social classes may consider the hours theywork to be excessive, a greater proportion of manual workers than managersand professionals consider these to be necessary in order to earn enoughmoney to live. And in a ‘culture of consumption’ both money and time are