The changing world of women and leisure: feminism, ‘postfeminism’ and leisure

This paper focuses on the future of feminist analysis in leisure studies given the recent theoretical debates within postmodernism and the journalistic and academic assumptions that we are in a ‘post‐feminist’ era. This discussion is situated within the discourse of ‘change’ in which a changing world is seen to be throwing into disarray many of our shared taken‐for‐granted assumptions, values and theories. For the purposes of this paper I will be focusing on two major questions concerning feminism and leisure studies. First, I am interested to question whether the world of leisure for women reflects major social and cultural change. Can we identify changes in the lives of women that are having an impact on their leisure in the 1990s? Second, is feminism outdated both as a political movement and as a perspective that informs our theoretical analysis and understanding of leisure in this contemporary world?