Examining gender roles in family leisure food provisions: a longitudinal photographic analysis

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to investigate how gender roles around family leisure food provisions have changed over time. To do this, family photographs depicting a variety of family leisure food provisions in New Zealand over the last 100 years were analyzed. Photographs are a useful lens for addressing such issues. They document aspects of lives that we may be unable to see easily via other sources. The photographs utilized in this study came from a combination of archival family photograph albums and more recent albums sourced privately through advertising and snowball sampling. They were analyzed using qualitative visual thematic analysis. The findings are categorized based on different leisure settings and show the nature of changes in gender in each setting over time. We found that despite social changes contributing to the empowerment of women, they still carry the main responsibility for the facilitation of food-related chores in the leisure experience. While men take the ‘frontstage glory’ of food preparation during family leisure occasions, women are shown either in the kitchen alone or looking after small children doing the ‘backstage work’.

RéSUMé

La présenteétude suit l’ évolution au fil du temps des rôles genrés dans le cadre de l’alimentation en famille. À cette fin, nous avons analysé des photos de famille illustrant des scénes d’alimentation en famille lors de loisirs, en Nouvelle-Zélande, au cours des 100 derniéres années. Les photographies procurent un cadre d’analyse trés utile, car ils documentent des moments intimes de la vie familiale qui sont difficilement accessible par d’autres sources. Les photographies utilisées dans cette étude proviennent d’albums de photographies familiales d’archives et d’albums plus récents provenant de sources privées, obtenus par publicité et selon un échantillonnage par association. Les albums ont été analysés à l’aide d’une technique d’analyse thématique visuelle qualitative. Les résultats sont classés en fonction des différents contextes de loisirs et démontrent la nature des changements au fil du temps des rôles genrés dans chaque contexte. Nous avons constaté que malgré les changements sociaux qui contribuent à l‘autonomisation des femmes, elles réalisent toujours les principales tâches liées à l‘alimentation dans le cadre des loisirs. Alors que les hommes prennent volontiers le devant de la scéne lors de la préparation des aliments lors d’activités de loisir en famille, les femmes sont souvent montrées seules à la cuisine ou en train de s’occuper de jeunes enfants, dans des contextes moins mondains.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender roles
• leisure
• family
• photographs
• archival data
• food

MOTS-CLÉS:

• données d‘archives
• famille
• rôles des genres
• loisirs
• photographies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Parisa Saadat Abadi Nasab

Parisa Saadat Abadi Nasab is a PhD student in the Department of Tourism, University of Otago, Ōtepoti/Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her current research is on family leisure photographs to investigate how the nature of family leisure photos changed. In her research, she is looking to find the possible social/economic/cultural factors behind the changing nature of our family leisure photos through time. Before focusing on photographs as her main research interests, she did research on gastronomy tourism, tourism destination and customer satisfaction.

Trudie Walters

Trudie Walters - [email protected] Dr Trudie Walters is an independent researcher based in New Zealand. Her research interests include media representations and individuals’ experiences of leisure and events. Her publications include, among others, Events and Well-being (forthcoming with Allan Jepson), Marginalisation and Events (with Allan Jepson) and Second Homes and Leisure: New Perspectives on a Forgotten Relationship (with Tara Duncan). She is Lead Data Strategist for the Tourism New Zealand Conference Impact Programme, and a consultant with TRC Tourism Ltd. Trudie is President of the Australia and New Zealand Association for Leisure Studies.

Neil Carr

Neil Carr - [email protected]Neil Carr is a Professor in the Department of Tourism at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Neil’s research focuses on understanding behaviour within tourism and leisure experiences, with a particular emphasis on animals, children and families, and sex. His publications include, among others, Tourism and Animal Welfare, CABI (with Don Broom) and Dogs in the Leisure Experience, CABI.