‘I Think She Would Vibe Here:’ Justifying Gendered Privilege at an Elite University

• In Event: 4340 - Children, Youth and Institutions

Abstract

The everyday realities of historically white sororities—including their demographic homogeneity, racial climate, and gendered dynamics—clash with college elite’s outwardly held ideals of meritocratic openness, inclusivity, and equality for women. We use interview data with sorority women (N=37) at a highly selective private university to investigate how sorority members justify practices that exclude other women and relegate them to lower-status social positions. Participants were aware that, in striving to recruit “popular, pretty” girls who would be attractive to elite men on the heterosexual fraternity party circuit, they were restricting membership in ways that undermined their goals of diversity and inclusion and participating in practices that disempower women. To manage these contradictions, and to distance themselves from negative associations of sororities with patriarchy and elitism, participants mocked the sorority system. Participants also drew on cultural ideas about gendered forms of “fun” and organizational “fit” to justify practices that excluded and marginalized other women. Nonetheless, participants’ attempts to manage the contradictions between their exclusionary practices and their open, meritocratic ideals remained uneasy.

Authors

• Simone Ispa-Landa, Northwestern University

• Mariana Oliver, Northwestern University