Women's Leisure in a Resource Industry Town: Problems and Issues

The study reported seeks to provide a clearer picture of what it means to be a woman in a hinterland community. It also reveals inadequacies in malestream meanings of leisure, in discussions of the pleasures and difficulties that characterize women's lives in such communities. The study involved participant observation over a one year period in a resource industry town in the interior of British Columbia. It also involved individual and collective interviews with women contacted through the local college and a Women's Centre. The discussions revealed two different kinds of barriers to women's leisure in remote communities. At one level, there are the effects of ideologies of familism and patriarchy which work to the disadvantage of women everywhere. However, the evidence also suggests that there are problems that are particular to hinterland communities, or at least are sharper there. These include lack of public transportation or day care, frequent family mobility and poor job opportunities for women, as well as more subjective factors like the strength of familist norms in recreation practices and the politics of being “different” in a community of this size.