The Hens are Clucking: Women Performing Gossip in Their Leisure Lives

Abstract

Using a feminist poststructural lens, this conceptual article aims to trouble patriarchal understandings of gossip as a devalued dimension of women's talk. To accomplish this aim, I focus on decentering three dominant discourses tied to women's gossip that position gossip as idle talk, based on the personal lives of others, and trivial. In particular, I consider the ways power is part of women's performances of gossip and how women can use gossip to construct, maintain, and resist gendered subjectivities as part of their leisure. This article also aims to illustrate the need for leisure researchers, and in particular feminist leisure researchers, to pay closer attention to the topic of women's gossip and the complex and messy connections between gossip, women's talk, and women's leisure lives.