Women's Leisure: Affiliation, Self-Determination, Empowerment and Resistance?

Because of leisure's relationship to the quality of life, mental health, and development, access to or opportunity for leisure has been the topic of much study. This research has shown that women across cultures face numerous constraints to leisure—both material and ideological. Leisure is a context of women's oppression and exploitation. However, oppression or hegemony “is never complete, always in the process of being reimposed, and always capable of being resisted” (Weiler, 1988). Indeed leisure, which is defined by relative freedom and rolelessness, may not only be a realm of cultural reproduction but also a context for women's empowerment and cultural resistance. This research explored that question. It was found that the female gender role was not only reproduced in leisure (leisure as affiliation) but also challenged (leisure as self-determination). In self-determined leisure women were empowered to resist falsifying, but also to regain or create, their sense of themselves.