News & Events

Hong Kong Sociological Association 26th Annual Conference on 6 December 2025 at HKBU

2025/12/6

Conference Details:

• Theme: Navigating a Changing World: Comparative Perspectives on Social Structures and Inequalities
• Date: 6 December 2025
• Venue: Hong Kong Baptist University
• Call For abstracts: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSed02oVNxk-eIL5IaB8LwDXvS1K_HPZbuksNep54tqPIxmOew/viewform
• Deadline for abstract submission: 19 September 2025 (max: 300 words)

Keynote:

• Speaker: Man-Yee Kan (Professor of Sociology, The University of Oxford)
• Topic: Gender differences in leisure time in East Asian and Western societies
• Abstract:
  Time is arguably the most valuable resource, and how it is used has profound implications for social inequalities, health, and well-being. This talk focuses on leisure time. We analyse time diary data from 14 East Asian and Western societies — China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Spain, Italy, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, and Norway — collected between 2000 and 2018, to examine gender gaps in leisure time.
  We explore how gender differences in leisure — including activities such as sport, socialising, media consumption, and reading — vary across the life course, from ages 16 to 75. Our findings reveal persistent gender inequalities: men generally enjoy more leisure time than women. In most of the societies studied, gender gaps in leisure time are present across all age groups. These disparities are particularly pronounced in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Spain, and Italy, and comparatively smaller in the Nordic countries.
  Across all contexts, gender differences are evident in both active (e.g. sport, socialising) and passive (e.g. watching television, browsing the internet) leisure activities. Notably, the gaps are widest at weekends, when most individuals are free from paid work.
• Biography:
  Man-Yee Kan is Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford. She grew up in Hong Kong and completed her undergraduate degree in Sociology at the University of Hong Kong, before going on to obtain a master's and a doctorate in Sociology at the University of Oxford. Her research centres on time use, gender inequalities, marriage and family dynamics, migration, and welfare policies across East Asian, European, and Anglophone societies. She currently leads the GenTime project, funded by the European Research Council (2018–2027), which examines trends in gender inequality in time use in East Asian and Western countries. She will present key findings from the project at the conference.