‘Football Fitness’: constraining and enabling possibilities for the management of leisure time for women

ABSTRACT

The aim of the article is to identify constraining and enabling aspects for the management of leisure time for women participating in ‘Football Fitness’, a new ‘sport for all programme’ carried out in associative sport clubs in Denmark. The article is based on six focus group interviews with white, middle-class female participants (N = 32, aged 27–56). An analysis combining Hochschild’s conceptualization of the second and third shift [1989. The Second Shift. New York: Avon] with Elias and Dunning’s perspective on leisure as part of the spare-time spectrum and leisure sport as a quest for excitement [1986. Quest for Excitement. Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process. New York: Basil Blackwell] demonstrates that leisure sport participation must be understood in relation to both spare time, family life, and work life, as these spheres are interrelated. According to the women, both doing and planning housework are constraining for their leisure sport participation. On the other hand, Football Fitness is enabling in the sense that the women experience it as something pleasurable and a ‘free space’.

KEYWORDS:

• Leisure
• women
• Elias
• quest for excitement
• Football Fitness
• Hochschild
• leisure sport

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Lone Friis Thing is Associate Professor at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen. She holds Master’s degrees (cand.scient) in the areas Humanities and Social Sport Sciences and Biology, as well as a PhD degree from the Department of Sociology – all from the University of Copenhagen. She is a researcher in health promotion and prevention in relation to sport and physical activity.

Maria Gliemann Hybholt is currently a PhD student at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen. She has a Master’s degree (cand.scient.) in Humanities and Social Sport Sciences from the University of Copenhagen. Her research involves, among other things, health promotion and bodily aspects in the everyday life in regard to physical activity.

Andorra Lynn Jensen is a research assistant at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen. She has a Master’s degree (cand.scient.) in Humanities and Social Sport Sciences from the University of Copenhagen. Her current research includes pole dance from a gender perspective and evaluation of sport health programmes.

Laila Susanne Ottesen is Associate Professor at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen. She holds a Master’s degree (mag.art.) in European Ethnology and a PhD degree in sport and everyday life from the Department of Humanity – both from at the University of Copenhagen. She is a researcher in the voluntary sports sector and focuses on implementation and development of health promotion and prevention programmes in relation to sport and physical activity.

Notes

1. With the exception of the age group 70+, which averages just under 10 minutes lower (Laub 2013).

2. In 2014 the employment rate for women in Denmark aged 15–64 was 69.8% (Eurostat 2015a). Of these women, a little more than a third (35.7%) was part-time employees (Eurostat 2015b).