Gender and Serious Leisure Careers: A Case Study of Women Sea Cadets‪.‬

Introduction The concept of serious leisure is increasingly recognized as a powerful means to explore the dynamics of enduring leisure engagement. Developed in the work of Stebbins (1979, 1992), the concept of serious leisure recognizes in leisure features and experiences normally associated with work (Beatty & Torbert, 2003). Commitment, boredom, stress and a continual balancing of immediate costs for long term gratifications distinguish serious leisure from more everyday or casual forms (Stebbins, 1992). This recognition disrupts any easy interpretation of leisure as necessarily relaxing or hedonistic and offers illuminating ways of approaching the complexity of our lived experiences of long-term and time-intensive leisure (Raisborough, 1999). The work-like qualities of serious leisure are mainly explored through the concept of a serious leisure career. Serious leisure was thus defined by Stebbins as: "The systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity that participants find so substantial and interesting that, in the typical case, they launch themselves on a career centered on acquiring and expressing its special skills, knowledge and experience" (p. 3).