“It’s a Show that Everybody Puts On”: Enacting Femininity in Southern Sorority Rush

Abstract

ABSTRACT Rush, the week-long process of recruiting for and joining historically White National Panhellenic Conference sororities, is an emotionally heightened process characterized by gender expectations and formal rules that both define a status system and place women into it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 19 women affiliated with eight National Panhellenic Conference sororities at a large public university in the South, as well as one Greek Life administrator, we examine how women’s own goals, cultural expectations, and the formal organization of rush interact to shape enactments of femininity. We argue that social factors at both cultural and institutional levels motivate and reward a hegemonic femininity whereby women leverage racial and class privilege to gain status over other women within a system that subordinates women to men.