Leading, following and sexism in social dance: change of meaning as contained secondary adjustments

By assigning men the role of ‘lead’ and women the role of ‘follow’, social dance can be viewed as a form of serious leisure that appears to perpetuate a system that positions women as subordinate to men. Interviews with 29 women and 10 men who self-identified as social dancers revealed that women used several strategies to create meanings for following that allowed them to achieve parity with men while operating in an explicitly sexist idioculture. Women’s interpretation of following and the relationship between leading and following was as learning a complex set of skills and abilities that allowed them to make an important contribution to the dance. The meanings women applied to following can be understood as contained secondary adjustments. By viewing following as a performance that requires considerable skill, women can expose the idea that the role of follow is subordinate to the lead as a social construction, and, in the process, use being a follow to subvert the expected social organisation.