Work and Leisure

72 Judy Whiterelativism which denies all generalisations. While it is of limited applicationfor policy-based research, its contribution to feminism more generally isnevertheless important, as it enables better understandings and moreopportunities for exploration of differences and diversity and their legitimacyand the role of power relations in shaping women’s experience.Women’s leisure: what leisure? Feminist research inthe 1980sFeminists in the 1970s and 1980s were taken up with establishing theinappropriateness of the traditional epistemological notions of the separationof work and leisure (Anderson 1975; Green, Hebron and Woodward1987a) and the complexity of women’s caring roles (Deem 1986; Wimbush1986). A start was made to push open the door examining women’s sexualityand ethnicity in relation to their involvement in ‘leisure activities’ (Scraton1986).The seminal research study of the 1980s, which illustrates the conundrumsof feminist research at that time, became known as ‘the Sheffield study’. Itprovided a theoretical analysis of the impact of gender on leisure experiences,based on empirical research. A random sample of 707 women in Sheffield,aged between 18 and 60, were interviewed at their homes for about an hour,in discussions designed to establish how much free time they felt they hadavailable to them and to relate this to their life situations and personal circumstances.This was augmented with less structured and more qualitativeinterviews with five groups, each of about five women, who were selectedfrom the first group surveyed, together with their resident men partners, ifthey had them. The groups were chosen ‘to represent those likely to havevarying types and levels of constraints and opportunities for leisure, becauseof their life cycle stage and domestic situation, and their household’s level ofaffluence’ (Green et al. 1987a: 2).While the research was neither a preliminary nor a pilot project, it wascertainly the first to attempt to explore the interaction of socio-economic,demographic and cultural factors which influence women’s opportunities forfree time and which shape how individual women perceive and use theirleisure. The research team argued that it was vital that there should be quantitativework to establish a base of knowledge about women’s access to leisuretime and their use of it, and that this should be done using feminist valuesand approaches. From this work, it was possible to collect qualitative materialfrom the interactive interview discussions which explored the processes ofdecision-making and negotiations which lay behind observed leisurebehaviour.The Sheffield study was the first UK study to set out to explain in detailwhat leisure experiences mean to those people experiencing them, and itssignificance in relation to other aspects of people’s lives. The investigation of