Poster #43 - Lady Lions, Lady Tiger, Lady Bears, oh my! Naming Youth Athletic Teams “Lady”

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

Background: In parts of the United States, it is common for female teams to be named after the school mascot preceded by the term "Lady" (Eitzen & Zinn, 1989, 1993). Little research has studied the impact of this phenomenon on young women. Studies 1 and 2 investigated the prevalence of Lady mascots at the collegiate and high school levels. Study 3 was an experiment to explore the effects of gendered mascots on perceptions of preadolescent female athletes.

Study 1 Methods and Results: To investigate the prevalence of “Lady” mascots, websites for NCAA and NAIA member schools that sponsored women’s sports were examined. Women’s basketball was the focus of these analyses, as investigating the mascots of every sport was not possible due to time constraints and women’s basketball is a popular sport, making representation from schools across the country possible. If the athletic department’s webpage, news articles, or social media accounts referred to the team as "Lady," they were coded as a "Lady team." The prevalence of Lady teams among NCAA and NAIA schools in the United States was determined to be 11.04% (n=149). The pattern of gendered mascots varied significantly across the various divisions (χ2 (3) = 49.78, p<.001, V=.19) and across geographic regions (χ2 (9) =155.33, p<.001, V=.34), with schools in the South gendering women's teams the most (Table 1).

Study 2 Methods and Results: Study 2 examined gendered mascots at the high school level, because high school athletes are at a vulnerable time in their identity formation and thus being othered as a "Lady" could be particularly harmful. Due to time constraints, Texas high schools in the largest division (6A; N=243) were used as a case study to get a glimpse into the trends of high school sports mascots. Of the schools included in the sample, 73.66% (n=179) used the term "Lady" in reference to their girls’ basketball teams, a rate much higher than colleges.

Study 3 Methods and Results: The effects of gendered mascots on perceptions of young female athletes were explored through an experiment. Participants (N=250) recruited from Prolific watched a video of a 10-year-old girls soccer game, with the team’s name manipulated to be either the “Eagles” or “Lady Eagles.” After controlling for participants’ sexism, participants in the “Lady Eagles” group perceived the young girls to be more in line with feminine stereotypes and less with athletic stereotypes than participants in the “Eagles” group (Table 2).

Conclusion: As demonstrated above, gendered mascots are frequent in collegiate and high school athletics and it is imperative that we begin to understand the impact of these names, as begun in Study 3. The term "Lady" is not harmless, as "Lady" mascots and names lead spectators to view athletes less in line with stereotypical athlete characteristics and more in line with feminine stereotypes. Future research should explore the developmental implications of gendered team names and mascots on female athletes. Is it possible that these athletes may go on to feel like “Lady” engineers, “Lady” lawyers, or “Lady” scientists?

Authors

• Sophia Liles, Nationwide Children's Hospital
  Presenting Author

• Jennifer Groscup