Connotation of leisure and leisure activities among urban Indian middle-class working women

ABSTRACT

Little is known about leisure consumption among professional women in emerging economies like India in contrast to extensive research on this topic in the West. This group of professional women, however, is of growing economic and social clout within their countries with increasingly important ramifications for the choices they take, including leisure. This study aims to understand meanings and expressions of leisure among urban Indian middle-class working women. Using a phenomenological approach, 28 urban Indian middle-class women working in Bangalore from varied sectors, belonging to different age groups and at diverse life-stages, were interviewed in-depth between the period of July 2017 and September 2018. The analysis showed that leisure activities among urban Indian middle-class working women strike a delicate balance between individual and social fulfilment. The activities were varied and performed for passion, health and well-being, commitment and fun. Two new meanings of leisure emerged from the study: being with myself and being stress-free. It was seen that this group of working women are actively negotiating a new balance – the work–leisure balance – between demands of their work-life and their own need for personal leisure. These new meanings, reflective of newly empowered gender roles in the changing socio-economic environment of emerging economies, saliently extend our understanding of gendered meaning of leisure.

KEYWORDS:

• Leisure
• meaning
• India
• working women
• urban middle-class

Disclosure conflicts of interest statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Basu, Aparna – Indian Women’s Movement: Human Rights, Gender and Environment Course, Delhi University.

2. A.J. Veal’s ‘Definitions of Leisure and Recreation’ (Veal, 1992).

3. https://bangalore.explocity.com/article/women-account-for-39-of-city-workforce; 11 October 2019; Times of India.

4. One of the important statements in ethics form was as follows: ‘I (the participant) understand that the researcher will not identify me by name in any reports using information obtained from this interview, and that my confidentiality as a participant in this study will remain secure. Subsequent uses of records and data will be subject to standard data use policies which protect the anonymity of individuals and institutions.’

5. The names of the participants have been disguised to protect their privacy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rema Naganathan

Rema Viswanathan is a PhD scholar in the field of Marketing at Amrita School of Business, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore. She is a graduate in Electrical Engineering and did her MBA from School of Management Studies, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kerala. She worked in the corporate field in the initial years before joining the academic stream. She has been teaching various Marketing subjects for the last 17 years at different Business Management Colleges. Her area of interest in teaching and research is Consumer Behaviour and Leisure Consumption. Currently she is the Head of Department of Undergraduate Management Program at a private business school in Bangalore, Karnataka.

Deepak Gupta

Dr. Deepak Gupta is a Professor in Marketing at the Amrita School of Business, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore. He is a graduate in Chemical Engineering from IIT Delhi and did his PGDM at IIM Calcutta. He did his PhD at UC Berkeley in Interdisciplinary Studies where he also earned an MA in Economics and an M.Sc. in Marketing at the Haas School of Business. Dr. Deepak Gupta’s research interests lie broadly at the intersection of Marketing, Economics, and Higher Education. He conducts research along with his students across a range of eclectic domains such as globalization and skilled migration; entrepreneurship and internationalization; the changing world of work and careers; the sharing economy; serious games and management pedagogy; and the exploration and modelling of the choices we make as individuals and consumers.

Rajiv Prasad

Rajiv Prasad is an MBA from IRMA, Anand, India and a Fellow of IIM Calcutta. He has been a member of the faculty at Amrita School of Business from 2007 till May 2021. On June 1st, 2021 he joined the Department of Management of Amrita University at its Kochi campus as the Chairperson. He has around twenty-five years of industry, teaching and research experience in the areas of positive organizational behavior; spirituality at the workplace; leadership, organizational culture, personality and business ethics, which he has taught for 14 years. He is also an Adjunct Faculty member of State University of New York at Buffalo and has been teaching the Organizational Behavior and Leadership course at the Executive MBA program conducted jointly by SUNY, Buffalo and Amrita School of Business at its Bangalore campus for many years. He also developed the Course Curriculum and the Text for the Business Ethics of Canada-based Commonwealth of Learning for their EMBA program in 2011. He has conducted many Management Development Programs (MDPs) for organizations such as UNICEF, ESIC (Employees State Insurance Corporation), PGDCIL and NDDB (National Dairy Development Board) in the areas of leadership, organizational culture and business ethics.