Exploring the gendered nature of silver tourism

• Main Author: Kannan R, Ashvini
• Other Authors: Lim Khek Gee, Francis
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66171
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Research shows that gender roles influence and constrain leisure time, however, there is limited literature exploring this relationship in older adults. With the global rise in senior tourism, this paper seeks to understand how disparities in expectations of gender roles in households, shape the recreational travel motivations of retirees. Past work histories and the daily retirement experiences of the respondents will be discussed in relation to their gender roles and access to leisure time. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with sixteen Singaporean middle-class baby-boomer retirees. Findings highlight the persistence of gender inequalities in the division of household labor and caregiving during retirement. Women continued to engage in significant amounts of unpaid work at home and men in comparison had more leisure time. The results confirm the gendered nature of leisure in existing literature. Furthermore, it establishes that women retirees primarily travel for leisure as a form of relief from their conventional gender roles.