The salience of gender during the transition to higher education: male students' accounts of performed and authentic identities

Abstract

This article looks at the transition to higher education made by a group of male undergraduates. The data were collected though one‐to‐one interviews with 24 students, who were asked questions designed to elicit data about their positioning in relation to hegemonic masculinities. The evidence presented here supports the view that gender operates as a salient and accessible means of identifying an in‐group of peers and that ‘laddish’ practices are enacted as a function of the initial stages of peer group formation. However, such practices are described by many respondents as a ‘front’ or performance. In distancing themselves from such practices, these students did not succeed in articulating ‘alternative masculinities’, but many articulated a strong underlying value for an authentic self, providing an important insight into the experiencing of identity.

Notes

1. Names of participants and places have been fictionalised.

2. These were selected to provide a range of male‐dominated subject disciplines, female‐dominated subject disciplines and subject disciplines with a balanced male/female distribution.

3. Based on responses to one of the questionnaire items.

4. One rugby club member, Paul, was interviewed. He claims there is some justification for the heavy drinking, song‐singing stereotype applied to rugby players. However, he, too, ‘others’ the more extreme practices associated with this culture, refusing to take part in the initiation ceremonies, rejecting the ‘force‐feeding’ of alcohol, and distancing himself from charges of vandalism that were made about the club.

5. Only four explicit references were made to homosexuality. Though some interviewees may have been homosexual or bi‐sexual not one identified themselves in this way.