Josephine Burden

During the last quarter of the 20th Century there has been a strong groundswell of feminist critique of the dominant discourses in Leisure Studies. In addition to groundbreaking texts from all parts of the globe (see for example Wimbush & Wbot, 1988; Henderson et al, 1989; Green et al, 1990; Wearing, 1998; Thompson, 1999), major conferences have been held with a theme of feminist critique. The LSA conference in Leeds, UK in 1998 was run in conjunction with the Second International Women in Leisure Conference and had as its theme, 'The Big Ghetto: Gender, Sexuality and Leisure'. The Third International Women in Leisure Conference will take place in Fremantle, Australia, in 2001, in conjunction with the Australia/New Zealand Leisure Studies Association. A further indication of this groundswell was the granting of full Commission status the WLRA Tasskforce on Women in 1997. These developments indicate that feminist theorisation of leisure issues has become part of the research repertoire of people working in the field. Thus whilst quantitative studies such as those of Bittman (1991) continue to demonstrate women's disadvantage in access to leisure time, more and more qualitative work has theorised this disadvantage in terms of gender power relationships. This shift from the mere description of disadvantage to the analysis of the relationships which underpin that disadvantage allows the feminist researcher to explore the complexities of dimensions of power such as age, ethnicity, class, sexuality and ability which intersect with gender. In some instances, it also allows research to become a vehicle for social change. In this paper, I will use my own research with older people to show how feminist theories are being used in the closing decade of the 20th century to problematise one aspect of Leisure Studies, namely the gendered nature of public and private space.

Older women and men were participants in this qualitative research of three case studies of community theatre. Their stories, gathered through in-depth interviews and participant observation of the theatre projects over a four year period, informed the development of a theoretical model of leisure as process. Through devising and presenting their theatre pieces, 50 older people, ranging in age from 45-8 5 years, with differing cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, reflected on personal experiences, negotiated their own processes for working collaboratively, and presented the stories of theft lives publicly in a way which affirmed their actions and understandings of themselves and theft world. Interviews with more than 30 of these people allowed an analysis of the ways in which older people negotiated the processes of play-building and constructed meaning in their lives at a time when the social structures of paid work and family were becoming less central as people moved into the...

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