“It’s a Show that Everybody Puts On”: Enacting Femininity in Southern Sorority Rush

ABSTRACT

Rush, the week-long process of recruiting for and joining historically White National Panhellenic Conference sororities, is an emotionally heightened process characterized by gender expectations and formal rules that both define a status system and place women into it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 19 women affiliated with eight National Panhellenic Conference sororities at a large public university in the South, as well as one Greek Life administrator, we examine how women’s own goals, cultural expectations, and the formal organization of rush interact to shape enactments of femininity. We argue that social factors at both cultural and institutional levels motivate and reward a hegemonic femininity whereby women leverage racial and class privilege to gain status over other women within a system that subordinates women to men.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Since this study was conducted, the university has added a ninth NPC sorority chapter.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachel Allison

Rachel Allison is an associate professor of sociology and affiliate of gender studies at Mississippi State University. Her research interests include gender, sexualities, sport, and young adult sexual and romantic relationships. Dr. Allison is the author of Kicking Center: Gender and the Selling of Women’s Professional Soccer, published with Rutgers University Press in 2018. Recent articles on young adult relationships have been published in Journal of Marriage & Family and Qualitative Sociology. Email: [email protected].

Leticia Bulla

Leticia Chemin Bulla has completed a master of sociology at State University of Londrina, Brazil. She graduated suma cum laude from Mississippi State University with a major in sociology. In Brazil, she was awarded the CAPES’ Social Demand PROGRAM Scholarship (2021–2023). Her research interests include gender performance, institutions and gender, legal systems, punishment, and inequality. Email: [email protected].

Megan Phillips

Megan Y. Phillips (she/her) is a sociology PhD student at Mississippi State University. Megan identifies as a straight, White, cisgender woman from the South; is not affiliated with any Greek life organization; and researches gender and stratification, with an emphasis on femininities. Megan completed her MA in Social Science at Georgia Southern University, where she earned a graduate award for her thesis research on the manhood acts of trans men in the South and her contributions to the study of perceptions of the American dream among Black college students. Her thesis work was published in Sociological Inquiry. Email: [email protected].