Football, fast cars, and cheerleading: adolescent gender norms, 1978-1989.

Suitor, J. Jill ; Reavis, Rebel

During the past decade, there has been substantial interest in examining and explaining changes in gender-role attitudes and behaviors in the United States. This line of research has shown that gender-role attitudes have become markedly less traditional over the past two decades (cf. Mason & Lu, 1988; McBroom, 1987; Thornton, Alwin, & Camburn, 1983). This work has also revealed a decrease in traditionalism regarding the division of household labor across the 1970s and early 1980s (cf. Robinson, 1988; Shelton & Coverman, 1988), although the changes on these behavioral dimensions of gender roles are far less dramatic than are the changes in stated attitudes.

While this literature has shed a great deal of light on changes in adults' gender-role attitudes and behaviors, much less attention has been directed toward changes in gender roles among adolescents. This segment of the population should be of particular interest to scholars since adolescents are the harbingers of American gender roles in the coming decades.

Data from several sources suggest that adolescents entered the 1980s with surprisingly traditional gender-role attitudes. For example, Thornton and her colleagues' 1980 findings (1983) revealed that although adolescents held more liberal gender-role attitudes than did their mothers, a substantial proportion maintained relatively traditional attitudes. In fact, almost half of the adolescents agreed with the statement that "It is much better for everyone if the man earns the living and the woman takes care of the home and family." Similarly, Corder and Stephan (1984) found that while 70% of the school-age girls they surveyed in 1978 wanted to combine parenting, marriage, and employment, only 40% of the boys wanted their future wives to combine these roles. Consistent with this pattern, Hansen and Darling (1985) found that the majority of the adolescents they studied in 1981 held relatively traditional attitudes toward the division of household labor.

Studies of adolescents' views toward girls' participation in sports in the late 1970s and early 1980s also demonstrated the persistence of traditional gender-role attitudes, and the characteristics of the people they would most like to date or be friends with. Feltz (1978) reported that participation in sports accrued less status for girls than did other behaviors or attributes, while Williams and White (1983) found that the lowest ratings were assigned to girls who participated in sports. Kane (1988), using data collected in 1982, found that girls were least likely to choose athletics as the way they would like to be remembered in high school. She also found that the "gender-appropriateness" of the sport in which the girls participated greatly affected both girls' and boys' choices of friends and dating partners. Girls who were associated with sports that were seen as gender-appropriate (e.g., tennis) were substantially more likely to be viewed as desirable friends and partners than were girls who were associated with less gender-appropriate sports (e.g., basketball).

Studies of other dimensions of adolescents' behaviors also suggest the persistence of traditional gender roles a decade ago. For example, Canaan's (1990) findings revealed that boys used different mechanisms from girls to create and maintain their position in the social hierarchy in their high schools in the late 1970s and early 1980s. While boys used joke-telling to demonstrate their masculinity by defining their superiority to other males and females, girls used note-passing to develop friendships and to subordinate other females. Further, Eckert (1989) found that physical appearance and dress were of greater importance to girls' than boys' social status among adolescents in the early 1980s. Last, while cheerleading was an important means by which girls could accrue prestige (Eckert, 1989; Eicher, Baizerman, & Michelman, 1991; Foley, 1990), this activity was never mentioned as an avenue by which boys could do so.

Taken together, these findings suggest that American adolescents entered the 1980s with relatively traditional gender roles, as exemplified by both their stated attitudes and differences in the ways in which boys and girls accrued prestige. However, if changes in adolescents' attitudes and behaviors paralleled those of adults during the 1980s, we would expect to find substantially less gender-role traditionalism among teenagers who were graduating from high school at the end of the 1980s. On this basis, it was anticipated that there would be fewer differences in the ways boys and girls acquired prestige in high schools by the end of the decade.

The data used in the present paper were collected between 1978 and 1982, and between 1989 and 1990 from students enrolled in a large public university in the northeastern United States. A total of 565 students completed questionnaires; 69 students were omitted from the analysis because their date of graduation from high school was either before 1978, or between 1983 and 1988. The final sample included 271 students who graduated between 1978 and 1982, and 225 students who graduated between 1988 and 1989. Fifty-nine per cent of the students were women; 41% were men.

All of the students were enrolled in introductory-level sociology courses: 85% of the students were enrolled in Introduction to Sociology; 15% were enrolled in a lower division course in family sociology. There were no statistically significant differences between the responses of students enrolled in the two courses; therefore, the data were combined for the analysis.

The data were collected during the first few weeks of the semester, prior to any discussion of issues involving gender roles. Data were collected from students enrolled in a total of nine classes taught by four professors; the findings did not differ significantly by instructor or class (within cohort).

Measurement

The students were asked to respond to the following requests: (1) "List five ways in which males could gain prestige in the high school you attended"; and (2) "List five ways in which females could gain prestige in the high school you attended." The logic behind this approach is that individuals generally acquire prestige by adhering to group norms. Therefore, the means of acquiring prestige should provide an indicator of the norms that exist in a particular group.

The respondents mentioned a total of 61 ways in which students in their high schools acquired prestige. Since several categories were similar, they were combined for the analysis. For example, "being friendly," "being outgoing," and "having a good personality" were combined into the category labeled "sociability"; "pretty," "handsome," and "having a good body" were combined into the category labeled "physical attractiveness." The 13 categories that were listed most frequently are included individually in the analysis; the remainder were combined in an "other" category which was taken into consideration in the analysis, but is not shown in Table 1.

The students were also asked to specify their gender, the year in which they graduated from high school, and the city/town in which they attended high school.(1)

RESULTS

Table 1 shows the distribution of students' reports of ways in which boys and girls acquired prestige in the high schools from which they had recently graduated. For example, 33.6% of the students who graduated between 1978 and 1982 reported that participation in sports was one of the ways in which girls gained prestige, while 90% of the students reported participation in sports as a way boys gained prestige.

The findings presented in the left-hand columns of Table I show substantial differences in most of the avenues by which boys and girls acquired prestige in high school in the early 1980s. Boys gained prestige primarily through (1) sports, (2) grades and intelligence, (3) access to cars, (4) sociability, (5) popularity with the opposite sex, (6) physical appearance, and (7) participation in school activities (e.g., school government, clubs). In contrast, girls gained prestige primarily through (1) physical attractiveness, (2) sociability, (3) grades and intelligence, (4) popularity with the opposite sex, (5) clothes, (6) participation in school activities, and (7) cheerleading.

The reports of students who graduated in the late 1980s are shown in the middle column of Table I. Boys in the late 1980s continued to acquire prestige primarily through sports and grades and intelligence, while girls continued to accrue prestige primarily through grades and intelligence, and physical attractiveness. Thus, while grades and intelligence [TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE I OMITTED] were important for both boys and girls throughout the 1980s, sports continued to play a much larger role in the prestige structure for boys than girls, while physical attractiveness continued to play a much larger role for girls than boys.

Some other behaviors and attributes by which students gained prestige also remained highly segregated by gender throughout the 1980s. For example, while a notable minority of students in both cohorts stated that boys in their high school had gained prestige through "toughness" or rowdiness, or by being a "class clown," almost no students in either cohort reported that these were avenues by which girls gained prestige. Conversely, although cheerleading was mentioned with some frequency by members of both cohorts as a way in which girls gained prestige, not one student in either cohort mentioned cheer-leading as a way in which boys gained prestige.

The most important change between the earlier and later cohorts was in the area of prestige acquired through participation in sports - particularly for girls; 34% of the students who graduated in 1978-82 mentioned sports participation as a way in which girls gained prestige, compared to 44% of those who graduated in 1988-89. In contrast, sports became a slightly less important avenue for boys; 90% of the 1978-82 graduates mentioned sports for boys, compared to 84% of the 1988-89 graduates. While these changes suggest a move toward parity in the role of sports for boys' and girls' prestige, it is important to recognize that among the 1988-89 graduates, sports participation is still almost two times more likely to be named as a source of prestige for boys than girls.

Another difference worth noting is the decrease in the role of cheer-leading. While almost 33% of the students who graduated in 1978-82 reported that cheerleading was a means of gaining prestige for girls, only 24% mentioned it in 1988-89. However, the fact that almost one-quarter of the members of the later cohort listed cheerleading for girls, while none listed it for boys, suggests that this activity remains gender segregated, and continues to be an important means of acquiring prestige for girls.

It is interesting to note that boys' acquisition of prestige through access to cars declined substantially across the decade, going from third to sixth place. The reasons for this remain unclear, and cannot be accounted for by any of the variables included in the study. For example, although a slightly larger proportion of students from the 1988-89 cohort attended high school in a city, this factor does not account for the finding; the importance of access to cars declined to the same degree among the subsample of students who attended high school in the suburbs.

Separate analyses by gender of the respondent revealed that men and women had generally similar perceptions of the ways in which boys and girls had acquired prestige in high school (tables not shown). The few differences of interest involved girls' participation in sports and girls' sexual activity.

When the responses are divided by gender, it becomes clear that the overall change in the prestige girls acquired through participation in sports was due to changes in the boys' perceptions. Between 1978-82 and 1988-89, the percentage of women who mentioned sports as a way in which girls gained prestige increased only slightly (from 39% to 44%); however, the percentage of men who listed girls' sports as a means of gaining prestige almost doubled (from 26% to 46%).

The other interesting difference between women's and men's reports involved sexual activity as a means through which girls gained prestige. As shown in Table 1, sexual activity for girls was mentioned substantially more frequently among 1988-89 than among 1978-82 graduates. However, this change was due almost entirely to reports by men. In the early 1980s, women and men were approximately equally likely to report that girls gained prestige through being sexually active. In contrast, among members of the later cohort, 16% of the men reported that girls in their high school gained prestige through sexual activity, compared to only 4% of the women.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The findings presented here suggest there was relatively little change in gender norms among high school students between the early and late 1980s. A comparison between the reports of students who graduated in 1978-82 and those who graduated in 1988-89 shows that boys continued to acquire prestige in high school primarily through sports, grades, and intelligence, while girls continued to acquire prestige primarily through a combination of physical appearance, sociability, grades, and intelligence. The only noteworthy differences between the reports in the early and late 1980s were an increase in girls' acquisition of prestige through participation in sports and sexual activity, a decrease in the role of cheerleading, and a reduction in the importance of car ownership as a means by which boys accrued prestige.

The findings also indicated that most of the change that occurred in the ways girls accrued prestige could be accounted for by changes in boys', rather than girls' perceptions. Further, the particular mechanisms that boys viewed as increasingly important were those that have traditionally been avenues by which men, rather than women, have gained prestige - participation in sports and engaging in sexual activities. Thus, much of the change that occurred involved a greater acceptance of girls in traditionally "male" activities rather than the reverse, a pattern consistent with changes that have occurred in the occupational structure across the same period (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992).

One limitation of the present study is that the data were collected from only one university. It is possible that this university differs from many others in ways that could affect the findings. However, data collected at another university, but not presented in the present paper, suggest that the findings presented here may be replicated elsewhere. Between 1985 and 1989 one of the authors collected data from students enrolled in a medium-sized state university in New England. Analysis of those data revealed the same pattern of findings presented here, although the student bodies of the two universities differ substantially on demographic dimensions that might have affected gender norms (percentage of minorities; socioeconomic status; religion; percentage who attended high school in urban areas). The similarity between the reports of students in the two universities provides further support for the contention that there has been relatively little change in high school gender roles across the 1980s.

Thus, it appears that gender-role traditionalism continues to play an important role in the prestige structure of American adolescents.

1 Students in the 1978-81 cohorts were not asked where they had attended high school.

REFERENCES

Canaan, J. E. (1990). Passing notes and telling jokes: Gendered strategies among American middle school teenagers. In F. Ginsburg, & A. L. Tsing (Eds.), Uncertain terms: Negotiating in American culture. Boston: Beacon Press.

Corder, J., & Stephan, C. W. (1984). Females' combination of work and family roles: Adolescents' aspirations. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 46, 391-402.

Eckert, P. (1989). Jocks and burnouts: Social categories and identity in the high school. New York: Teachers College.

Eicher, J. B., Baizerman, S., & Michelman, J. (1991). Adolescent dress, Part II: A qualitative study of suburban high school students. Adolescence, 26, 679-686.

Feltz, D. (1978). Athletics in the social status system of female adolescents. Review of Sport and Leisure, 3, 98-108.

Foley, D. E. (1990). The great American football ritual: Reproducing race, class, and gender inequality. Sociology of Sport Journal, 7, 111-135.

Hansen, S. L., & Darling, C. A. (1985). Attitudes of adolescents toward division of labor in the home. Adolescence, 20, 60-72.

Kane, M. J. (1988). The female athletic role as a status determinant within the social systems of high school adolescents. Adolescence, 23, 253-264.

Mason, K. O., & Lu, Y. H. (1988). Attitudes toward women's familial roles: Changes in the United States, 1977-1985. Gender and Society, 2, 39-57.

McBroom, W. H. (1987). Longitudinal change in sex-role orientations: Differences between men and women. Sex Roles, 16, 439-452.

Robinson, J. P. (1988). Who's doing the housework? American Demographics, 10, 24-29.

Shelton, B. A., & Coverman S. (1988). Are men's roles converging with women's?: Estimating change in husbands' domestic labor time, 1975-1981. Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta, Georgia.

Thornton, A., Alwin, D. F., & Camburn, D. (1983). Causes and consequences of sex-role attitudes and attitude change. American Sociological Review, 48, 211-227.

Williams, J. M., & White, K. A. (1983). Adolescent status systems for males and females at three age levels. Adolescence, 70, 381-389.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1992). Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1992. Washington, DC.

This paper was presented at the August 1992 Meetings of the American Sociological Association, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The authors wish to thank Scott Feld, Karl Pillemer, and Patricia Ulbrich for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and to acknowledge Karl Pillemer, Sheryl Zebrowsky, and Bruce Hare for their assistance in collecting the data.