Organized Sports Participation, Masculinity, and Attitudes toward Women

Abstract

Sport is one institution in U.S. society that, through embedded patterns of behavior, may contribute to an ideology of acceptance concerning gender inequality. Organized sport participation, which has been historically reserved for men, incorporates young men and boys into an institution that has its own norms and socialization processes.

Research was conducted on college students currently enrolled at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. A survey was administered to these college students during regularly scheduled class time. The survey was in part adapted from The Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS) as well as the Brannon Masculinity Scale (BMS).

Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, bivariate correlations, and multiple regression to see if there was a relationship between the control variables, the sports participation variables, the scores on the BMS which measures the acceptance of traditional masculinity, and attitudes toward women.

The results showed that gender and academic class are significantly related to the scores on the AWS. The results also showed that there were not any statistically significant relationships between the sports participation variables and the scores on the AWS. The regression analyses were consistent with these findings.