Inequalities in Girls’ High School Sports Participation: How Social Class, Race/Ethnicity, and Gender Route Opportunities to Play and Persist in Athletics

Abstract

ABSTRACT High school athletics are understudied sites for social and educational stratification. Participation can offer mental and physical health benefits, improved student retention and graduation rates, the encouragement of pro-social behaviors, resume building, and enhanced social statuses. Despite legal prohibitions against race and gender discrimination in schools, opportunities to play and persist in interscholastic athletics may reflect and amplify existing social and educational stratification processes. Using an exploratory sequential mixed-methods research design, this study centers on girls’ high school sports and considers how gender, race/ethnicity, and social class operate at the individual, interactional, cultural, and institutional levels and encourage proclivities, commitments, and support for participation. We combine qualitative (N = 28 women and 47 total college athletes) and quantitative (N = 4,271 high school students) studies to inquire about how, and to what extent, racial/ethnic and social-class dynamics affect girls playing any and specific high school sports and whether they play persistently. Findings suggest that schools co-construct unequal athletic opportunity structures by nurturing and rewarding a cultivated athletic habitus associated with masculinity, whiteness, and affluent dispositions. These processes disguise athletic advantages and successes as well-earned merit and restrict who is most likely to receive the individual and social benefits of high school sports participation.