In this study, I explore how school band organizational culture produces gender roles and stereotypes within a percussion section. While previous research (Abeles, 2009) records percussion as predominantly male demographically and in popular perception, such research limits itself to battery percussion, largely excluding mallet percussion. Additionally, researchers have not addressed how existing gender stereotypes influence percussionists or how such stereotypes propagate. This research, a case study, supplements existing findings by qualitatively assessing how students and directors perceive gender stereotypes’ influence the organization, and how stereotypes emerge. By using multiple data sources, I illuminate various understructures (Acker, 1990) that help enforce gender roles and stereotypes observed and described by participants. Understructures represent the unintended impact of aspects of organizational culture. The exploration of understructures helps to explain how gender patterns in percussion sections continue despite the wishes of directors and students alike. Data analysis revealed percussion as divided into two “zones:” mallet and battery percussion, wherein females predominantly play mallets. Participants associated two different skill sets with the zones. Data revealed that experiences in middle school, family tradition, and other factors directly affected what zones students occupied and what skills they had obtained. The most valued musical skills reflected masculinized ideals of marching band and battery percussion. I concluded that understructures influenced percussion students by tacitly predetermining their placement in one of two instrument-based zones. These zones embodied a hierarchized system that privileged masculine-typed battery/marching instruments. I theorized that dividing percussion into gendered zones negatively influenced the musical and academic prospects of all students. / 2019-10-23T00:00:00Z