Abstract：Researches about gender and leisure in the past twenty years have expanded and become one of the important research focuses of leisure research in western countries as researchers from around the world have examined leisure behavior and its meanings from a range of cultural, theoretical perspectives. It was demonstrated that constraints were a function of the cultural interpretation and institutionalization of gender. Some research concluded that women had less time to take part in leisure activities and were lack of empowerment than men due to social meaning of roles, unequal power, and cultural expectations. On the whole, understanding the relationship between gender and leisure behavior has been a useful way to probe new ideas about leisure. Comparing with the rapid development in leisure research in west countries, researches on leisure behavior in China, especially that focus on gender difference in leisure behavior are just beginning, but increasing gradually since human geography concerns more and more about life quality and social equality. Thus, the authors statistically test a series of gender differences in resident's daily leisure behavior using the first-hand data from the activity daily survey of Beijing in 2007. It is demonstrated that male and female residents differ significantly in four aspects: men have significantly more leisure opportunities than women. Although women joined in the labor market more and more, they still have to take primarily responsibility to do the housework and child-care work which decrease the probability to enjoy their free time and join in leisure activities. Another difference is that men spend more time on leisure activities than women totally while women spend more time on housework and family-member-care activities. Referring to leisure space choice, male and female residents has no significantly difference in choosing outdoor leisure activities, buts men are more likely to choose further places than women when they take part in cultural entertainment activities. Finally, men would like to do leisure activities by their own, but women prefer to share leisure activities with family members, indicating that men pay more attention to their own experience, and women pay more attention to social relationship in leisure activities.
