Work and Leisure

Gender, work and leisure 81leisure studies but within sociology and consumption, provide any more thana shift into another ghetto, rather than, as Deem (1998) suggests, a ‘way outof the ghetto’? Deem posits that if leisure research is gender-centred andremains so, in conception and analysis, then it is probably appropriateand possible to continue to encourage it. A move towards studies of womenand leisure in which ‘attention is paid to difference, increasingly focusing oncommercial leisure, and situating gender analyses in wider research questionsand problems’ can be done within existing feminist frameworks. I do notbelieve ‘relocating gender and leisure scholars outside their current ghetto’will do anything to encourage a serious debate about the research in feministtheory and practice. Building on the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinarymodes of study, securing their foundations, and adhering to feminist principles,will provide a more robust future. This is the message of the latest essayand debate on feminist theory published by Stanley and Wise (2000), whosebeacon of hope has kept many going in times of seeming despair.ConclusionThis chapter has provided a commentary on the changes observed over thepast generation of research encompassing gender, work and leisure fromfeminist perspectives. It has highlighted some of the key debates and eventsin this erratic journey, which has been beset by continual doubts anduncertainties about the tasks to be accomplished and ways in which thismight be done.The key conclusions have to be, however, that the achievements of genderresearch in leisure are considerable. We now have evidence, from a variety ofwomen, about how they experience leisure, and we have sufficient informationand knowledge, grounded in women’s values, feelings and points of view,to be able to develop theory ‘from the bottom up’. In the words of Stanleyand Wise:what counts as knowledge . . . is marked by the politics of location andinevitably takes the form of situated knowledges . . . and insists that allknowledge claims emanate from a point of view that makes a considerabledifference to what is seen, how it is seen, how it is represented, andtherefore what kinds of claims are made, on whose behalf.(Stanley and Wise 2000: 270)The feminist scholarship reported here is grounded research and writing,which does not claim to be generalisable but is the result of shared ideas andepistemologies.Stanley and Wise (2000) advocate the undertaking of a number of interestingmeta-theory projects to ‘greatly increase the stock of knowledge abouthow and why things are as they are, carried on by many people, in different