Women, the city and holidays

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Abstract
This paper reports some preliminary research on women and holidays carried out in the summer of 1994 in Lancaster, a city in the north west of England. The research, which involved interviewing an opportunity sample of 54 women visitors and residents on the streets of Lancaster, attempted to explore holidays as an aspect of engendered leisure. The analysis makes use of theories about space, place and time as well as ideas about the tourist gaze and deindustrialized and restructured cities. It is suggested that the issue of women and holidays raises important questions about gender relations in households, but it is also argued that theories about tourism and places which ignore gender cannot offer a satisfactory account of how women consume places and regard time and space. In conclusion, the paper sketches ideas about how future research on women and holidays might be conducted.