Gender is not enough: rethinking the construct in leisure research

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Leisure researchers have acknowledged the importance of gender in one’s leisure experience for several decades. As the concept of gender evolves in society to be accepted as a more fluid and less fixed construct, the field of leisure, like other fields, should rethink the way gender is both conceptualised and operationalised. This includes thinking both about a more nuanced measurement approach of the construct itself, as well as recognising that examining gender alone does not paint a complete picture of any leisure experience, particularly in the ways that one’s gender interacts with other identities to enable and constrain. A systematic literature review (SLR) was used to examine the gender construct used in empirical studies in the past five years in three major leisure journals. The inclusion of other identities was also explored. We found that leisure researchers still mainly measure gender in the binary and that some identities are prioritised over others in participant description, analysis, and discussion. Using examples from our findings, we offer strategies for researchers, reviewers, and editors in the leisure field to acknowledge the complexity of gender in leisure spaces.