A Cultural Confrontation: Western Impacts on Female College Students’ Leisure Opportunities in Taiwan and China

In this study, we discuss cultural change in Taiwan and mainland China, which, in turn, influences female college students’ attitudes towards leisure. A cross-cultural comparison of Taiwanese and mainland Chinese female college students’ leisure studies gives some indication of the extent to which aspects of female college students’ leisure have been affected by the Westernization in the Greater Chinese society. We present the results of a study that categorizes how cultural conflicts affect leisure concepts of female college students. A pilot study was conducted. Participants in the main study were 38 female students from mainland China and 20 female students from Taiwan. We found many factors constraining women’s leisure in the West also constrained Chinese women’s leisure pursuits, however, these factors were heightened by the ideology of Confucianism, which is the root of Chinese society. Influential factors we identified included the impact of Western media, educational level and family attitudes towards respondents’ leisure activities. To some degree, these would influence the type and contents of female college students’ leisure pursuits. Results showed that female college students are in the dilemma of having to conform to the traditional culture or adopt more Western ideologies while participating in leisure activities. However, female college students in Taiwan seem to struggle more in this regard compared to the respondents from mainland China. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015