Media representations of leisure and gender at the second home

Abstract

Studying how gender is represented in the media provides an avenue into the inner workings and values of a society, as the media is both a reflection and an influencer of socio-cultural norms. The recreational second home is an important site for leisure in many countries, and yet research into the experience of gender and leisure at the second home is a largely overlooked area of study. Some research has been done on the divide between work and leisure, finding that what constitutes ‘work’ (for example, home renovation projects) at the primary home may be considered ‘leisure’ at the second home but there has been little attention paid to gender differences in perception of work and leisure. Furthermore, no distinctions have been made between established second home stock and bespoke, architect-designed second homes. When an architect is involved in the design of a second home, the owners are able to stipulate how their leisure practices are catered for – they have the opportunity to envisage how their leisure time is to be spent, and where their priorities lie. These second homes are therefore a manifestation of the second home owner’s values and priorities, and thus their deep seated beliefs around gender. One means of gaining an insight into gender and leisure at the architect designed second home is to investigate how they are represented in the media, and this study utilizes home and lifestyle magazine discourses as its source of empirical material. This study provides important insights into media representations of gendered leisure and gender inequality in access to leisure over time in the context of second home culture in New Zealand. The researcher sought to take an interpretive, latent, inductive approach to the data rather than a descriptive, semantic, deductive approach. It centers on a thematic analysis of the written and visual discourse of second home articles in Home New Zealand magazine since its inception in 1936 and covers a period of 80 years. This magazine was the first architecture and lifestyle magazine to be produced in New Zealand for a New Zealand audience that was/is highly educated and affluent and is thus differentiated from the general readership of mainstream media. Gendered discourses in the second home articles were identified, and there was evidence of gender inequality concerning access to leisure in the Home New Zealand second home discourse. This was most overt in the written discourse of the 1940s and 1950s. Commonly, however, more subtle gendering was identified in the visual discourse; women were depicted as enjoying the ‘pleasure’ of cooking in their modern second home kitchen [working] while others were relaxing. Addressing issues of how gender is represented contributes to a more nuanced understanding of second home culture in New Zealand. In addition, such an analysis serves to shed light on cultural and societal changes over time.