Doing Gender by the Rules: How Organizational Policy Structures Gender Salience in Coed Sport

How can historically-masculine organizations most meaningfully promote gender integration, and what should they avoid? This paper examines organized mixed-sex (“coed”) sport as an ideal case for revealing how institutional policy structures gendered interactions. Study 1 observes formal rules of coed team sports and identifies what we call “gender-conscious” rules that specify gameplay based on the sex categories of athletes on the field. We find that the content of these rules relies on and reinforces three sexist cultural beliefs: (1) men are the default athletes, (2) men are superior athletes, and (3) women must be protected from men’s aggression. In Study 2, we interview 20 athletes who have played coed sport. They describe how gender-conscious rules force them to “do” gender in ways that are ultimately detrimental to inclusion. Athletes prefer using athletic skill, and not gender, to socially locate each other. When individuals do gender, they are accountable not just to their gender category but to the context-specific (and policy-informed) meanings of those categories. We discuss how organizations with meritocratic ideals can construct successful policies of integration by avoiding gender salience, and implications for theory on the production of the gender system.