Gendered cities: women and public leisure space in the ‘postmodern city’

This paper focuses on women's leisure in city urban space. It draws on feminist discourses around 'difference' and cultural geography that explores public space as a gendered, sexualized and racialized arena. Empirically the paper discusses two case studies of women's leisure in the city: older women and 'young' mothers including a specific sample of South Asian mothers. The research suggests that although there is an obvious plurality of meanings attached to leisure and a plurality of sites where this takes place, thus providing evidence of the fragmentation of women's experiences, there remain a combination of structural factors that have varying influences on women's leisure opportunities in an urban context. The challenge for leisure studies is to complement its already multidisciplinary base by drawing on work that opens up the complexities of space, not merely in the recognition of 'new' lifestyles and the conspicuous consumption of leisure but also, as a site for the maintenance and reproduction of complex power relations, in this instance, primarily those of gender and 'race'.