‘Homing in’: South Asian, Muslim young women and their physical activity in and around the home

ABSTRACT

Research that focuses on the home as a physical activity setting appears preoccupied with measuring activity. What is less researched is how the home is experienced as a physical activity context. This paper explores the physical activity experiences in and around the home of 13 South Asian, Muslim young women. Data were generated using participatory approaches in focus groups and individual interviews. The research highlights the home and vicinity, as a physical, social and cultural space, significant to these young women’s physical activity involvement. However, the home also emerges as an important site in the reproduction of gendered power relations. These young women recount the ways in which expectations on them to undertake traditional gender roles within the home can leave them with less time and energy to be physically active. Despite this, the young women suggest that positions other than ‘wife’ and ‘mother’ are envisaged for their future, not least in the ways in which they prioritise their education and schooling. The young women emerge as active agents who navigate diverse expectations and priorities to be physically active on their terms.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• home
• physical activity
• Muslim young women
• physicality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Annette Stride is a Principal Lecturer in Physical Education in the Carnegie School of Sport, Leeds Beckett University. Her teaching, research, consultancy and publications typically focus on issues of equity. She is particularly interested in the ways in which different identity markers intersect to create fluid, multiple and diverse experiences in PE, sport and physical activity contexts.

Anne Flintoff is Emeritus Professor of Physical Education and Sport in the Carnegie School of Sport, Leeds Beckett University. Her teaching, research and consultancy centres on issues of equity and social inclusion, particularly gender and race.

Sheila Scraton is Emeritus Professor of Leisure and Feminist Studies in the Carnegie School of Sport, Leeds Beckett University. She has taught, researched and published extensively in the areas of gender, race and feminist theories of physical education, sport and leisure.

ORCID

Anne Flintoff http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4384-2000

Notes

1 All names used in this article are pseudonyms.

2 For example, when reviewing the young women’s posters of their lives outside of school they often included images of sports equipment (e.g. cricket bats), or particular spaces in (e.g. bedrooms) and near the home (front yard). These served as prompts in the interviews to ask the young women why they had included that image and to get them to expand upon the kinds of activities they engaged in, where, how often, with whom and why.