The Life, Work and Recreational Physical Activity of Female Cleaners

TY - BOOK

T1 - The Life, Work and Recreational Physical Activity of Female Cleaners

AU - Lenneis, Verena

N1 - CURIS 2016 NEXS 327

PY - 2016/11

Y1 - 2016/11

N2 - The main aim of this article-based PhD thesis was to explore the recreational physical activity participation of female cleaners – an occupational group mainly consisting of minority ethnic women from non-western countries. As the PhD project was integrated in and financially supported by the Copenhagen Centre for Team Sport and Health, a part of the PhD project was to organize and evaluate a workplace physical activity programme that used team games as the main form of exercise. Via participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 42 cleaners and their supervisors I gained insights into their experiences with and great challenges to participate in a worksite fitness programme as well as their work, family and everyday lives, their previous experiences with sport and exercise and their health-related knowledge, opinions and practices. Although each of the four articles had a different focus and employed different theories, they drew a coherent picture: the interviewees’ everyday lives as migrant cleaners in Denmark had a decisive influence on their opportunities to engage in recreational physical activity: most women struggled with the demands of a physically exhausting job and an extensive ‘second shift’ at home and had therefore great difficulty exercising. In addition, (lack of) previous experience of sport and recreational physical activity seemed to have a decisive influence on their current recreational physical activity practices. I conclude that health policy and initiatives targeting cleaners or other marginalized groups of the population must pay specific attention to structural factors such as the organization of the labour market or to the gendered division of work.

AB - The main aim of this article-based PhD thesis was to explore the recreational physical activity participation of female cleaners – an occupational group mainly consisting of minority ethnic women from non-western countries. As the PhD project was integrated in and financially supported by the Copenhagen Centre for Team Sport and Health, a part of the PhD project was to organize and evaluate a workplace physical activity programme that used team games as the main form of exercise. Via participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 42 cleaners and their supervisors I gained insights into their experiences with and great challenges to participate in a worksite fitness programme as well as their work, family and everyday lives, their previous experiences with sport and exercise and their health-related knowledge, opinions and practices. Although each of the four articles had a different focus and employed different theories, they drew a coherent picture: the interviewees’ everyday lives as migrant cleaners in Denmark had a decisive influence on their opportunities to engage in recreational physical activity: most women struggled with the demands of a physically exhausting job and an extensive ‘second shift’ at home and had therefore great difficulty exercising. In addition, (lack of) previous experience of sport and recreational physical activity seemed to have a decisive influence on their current recreational physical activity practices. I conclude that health policy and initiatives targeting cleaners or other marginalized groups of the population must pay specific attention to structural factors such as the organization of the labour market or to the gendered division of work.

UR - https://rex.kb.dk:443/KGL:KGL:KGL01009283276

M3 - Ph.D. thesis

BT - The Life, Work and Recreational Physical Activity of Female Cleaners

PB - Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen

CY - Copenhagen

ER -