Thandi Hawa Khane/ to Get Some Fresh Air: Understanding Perceptions of Leisure and Park-Going Experience Among Women in New Delhi, India
Public parks are a hub of constant social interaction and leisure behaviour. They reflect gendered patterns of leisure in everyday life and community. Feminist perspectives on leisure cite the leisure gap between men and women and reveal an absence of opportunities for women to exercise freedom in such arenas of life (Henderson, 1993). Considering the often-overlooked aspect of leisure formation in women’s groups and urban spaces in the developing world, this study looks at the confluence of leisure and gender in parks. The study was conducted in two public parks in New Delhi, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with fifteen regularly park-going women.
The study revealed increasing inequalities in women’s everyday leisure and negotiations with space. The social meanings attached to leisure by women park-goers included a series of similar words and phrases such as ‘aaram’, ‘thandi hawa khane’, and ‘shanti hote he’ ( leisure, to feel the fresh air, the mind is at peace) among others. The middle-aged, lower-middle-class respondents saw leisure in between the binaries of private/public, home/park, and indoor/outdoor. Women almost always came in groups and constantly surveilled their children’s play at these parks. This highlighted the purpose-defined movement of women, which has largely been theorised by Ranade (2007), Phadke (2012) and others. Where women and men sit, their entry and exit timings reveal women's constraints in leisure that often go unnoticed. The study sheds light on women's companionship and the centrality of leisure, examining how the everyday act of visiting these parks created ‘modes of respectability’ for newly married women in the neighbourhood.