Researchers in the critical education tradition have documented the importance of women's peers in campus culture reproducing gender inequality in schooling. This dissertation focuses on fraternity little sister programs (groups of women who affiliate with men's social fraternities on college campuses) as organizational elements of campus peer culture. / Using data from open-ended depth interviews with forty Euro-and African-American little sisters, participant observation, interviews with other students and campus officials, and archival data, I show how organizational structure and culture differed by race and how this directly affected the reproduction of gender inequality. The structure of little sister organizations (particularly little sisters' quasi-member status) and their activities facilitated the reproduction of men's domination over women by creating a hierarchy where men ruled and women served. Aspects of fraternity little sister culture such as men's selection criteria, sexual ideologies and fraternity sex culture served to reproduce gender inequality as well. Euro-American women were more likely to be exploited sexually; African-American women faced exploitation in the form of their domestic labor for the fraternity. I examine the strategies of resistance that women used to combat the structural and cultural subordination they experienced as fraternity little sisters. African-American women were more likely to resist domination collectively and had greater success than their Euro-American counterparts, whose individual acts of resistance had little effect on their organizations. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-07, Section: A, page: 2633. / Major Professor: Irene Padavic. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77498 |
| Contributors | Stombler, Mindy Ann., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 210 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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