Race, ethnicity and participation in leisure activities
In “Gender and Leisure” by Susan Shaw and “Ethnicity, Race, and Leisure” by James H. Gramann and Maria T. Allison, the authors describe the main ways that race, ethnicity, and gender influence access and participation in recreation and leisure. .
While gender distinctions are fairly clear when examining the differences between men and women, despite the emergence of a transgender community, a key difficulty in assessing the impact of race and ethnicity is how they are defined. That’s because of a growing multicultural society in the US, Europe, the UK, and Canada, which is blurring traditional and ethnic distinctions. But putting those difficulties aside, this article looks first at the influence of gender, and then at race and ethnicity.
As Shaw points out, there are three main ways in which gender has influenced leisure: in terms of participation in activities, the gendered nature of leisure constraints, and through the gendered outcomes of leisure. The activity approach has shown that a number of activities are stereotyped according to gender and that there have been differences in “opportunities, experiences and leisure time”. For example, as anyone who attends a sporting event or visits museums, art galleries and public lectures can see, as research confirms, there is a higher participation of men in “sports and physical activities” and women in “Artistic and cultural activities”. Then, too, there is a gendered nature to passive leisure, affecting the books, magazines, and movies that men and women read and watch, as well as the hobbies and crafts that they engage in. While Shaw points out that little research has examined these differences, these gender-based distinctions can be easily seen in the way marketers approach certain types of books, such as self-help and relationship books for women, and of sports and business for men. . Similarly, movies that deal with romance and relationships are aimed at women, and movies that feature adventure and action, at men.
Furthermore, confirming what has been obvious to the general public, in modern industrialized societies, men have generally had more time to engage in leisure activities, due to what sociologist Arlie Hochschild, with whom I studied at UC Berkeley, called the “second turn”. ” This is because, in general, working and married women have assumed most of the domestic and childcare tasks in the home, so they have not only participated in the paid workforce, but when they come home, they go back to work.Meanwhile, since they have been less engaged than women at home, men can enjoy additional free time, thanks to their partners.
However, these studies cited by Shaw on women having less free time were done in the 1980s and 1990s. In recent years, this distinction between men’s and women’s leisure time seems to be changing, according to popular media , in the sense that men are increasingly involved in sharing household chores and raising children. This change is even reflected in popular media, where men end up with children and learn to enjoy being fathers, such as Once Fallen. At the same time, successful workers are hiring nannies to do housework and care for their children and even hiring surrogate mothers to deliver them.
As for the limitations, these affect the opportunities that men and women have for leisure in different ways. For example, the cited research from the 1980s and 1990s has shown that women are more constrained than men because of household and family commitments, and because they feel a social obligation due to “ethics of care,” for example. which women may feel an obligation to care for others, so they feel less free to enjoy leisure for themselves. In addition, women may feel restricted from participating in certain types of activities due to their fear of violence (such as boxing and wrestling) or concerns about their body image (such as swimming), while men may resist engaging in activities that seem overly feminine and threaten their masculinity (such as ballet).
When it comes to race and ethnicity, it is more difficult to measure participation or restrictions, due to problems with classifying people by race or ethnicity. These classification problems have occurred due to ethnic and racial diversity and multiculturalism, so the old census racial classifications are breaking down, as Gramann and Allison point out. But those complications aside, much of the research has focused on the different ways that different ethnic and racial groups participate in outdoor recreation, and results have indicated that whites tend to be more involved in these activities than whites. members of minority groups. While one of the reasons many members of minority groups do not participate is due to their marginal position in society, whereby they have lower incomes and cannot afford to participate, have poor transportation, or fear discrimination, another factor may be cultural differences. Certainly, marginality could be a factor for those with limited incomes, when they have to pay substantial amounts to participate in leisure activities that are predominantly white, such as dining out at expensive restaurants or paying for tickets to theater and other cultural activities. . events.
But another key factor, in addition to income and social class, is that members of racial and ethnic groups may have their own “culture-based value system, norms, and leisure socialization patterns,” so who have different interests. An example of this can be seen in areas of ethnic concentration, such as Oakland, where there is a downtown Chinatown, African American areas in West and East Oakland, and Latin American areas in the Fruitvale district. In each area, there are different types of activities that appeal to the area’s ethnic groups, such as the Chinese dragon boat races, the African-American Kwanza celebration, and the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration. -American people. Additionally, members of the different groups may like to read books and magazines, as well as watch movies that feature their own racial or cultural group, while whites are less likely to be interested in these types of grassroots entertainment. cultural. As Gramann and Allison point out, such racially and ethnically based leisure choices may occur because they are “expressions of culture” or may be an indication of “selective acculturation.” Additionally, these culture-based forms of entertainment could be examples of “ethnic boundary maintenance,” in which people choose to participate in certain activities to highlight their ethnic differences, such as when Native Americans hold pow-wows across the country. to celebrate your tribe. identities