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Gender and sub-cultures: Have girls been ignored ?
Task sheet 5
Research into youth subcultures ignored girls for a number of years. The focus
of the research carried out by largely male sociologists was on boys and what
they were doing. McRobbie and Garber suggested, in 1975, there were a number
of reasons.
1.
Girls are absent from subcultures. They are not members of the groups
particularly early groups such as the Mods and Rockers.
2.
Girls are/were present but just invisible. McR and G argue girls were
involved – you can see them in the photos and the old film footage of the
early 50’s and 60’s.
Evaluation
The subcultures arose partly as a result of increased disposable income and
leisure time but girls wages were much lower than boys and girls magazines
encouraged girls to spend on household items in anticipation of marriage
(known as saving for their bottom drawer). They were though the girlfriends
of……………………….
The press tended to focus on the more sensational aspects of the youth
subcultures, the teddy boys ripping up seats in cinemas, the Mods and
Rockers on the beaches on the South coast and girls did not tend to
participate in such activities.
The teddy boys and the Rockers tended to use their culture to escape
family life and go to the ‘caff’. Most girls would not have been allowed to be
out for so long. Girls had to protect their reputations and not ‘get into
trouble’. Girls in the ‘50’s who spent too much time on the streets might be
thought to be ‘asking for it’.
3. Girls had their own different subcultures Its not so much that girls
were
absent or not but they had a complementary way of interacting among
themselves and with each other to form a distinctive culture of their own,
Teenybopper culture.
Evaluation
This links to the notion of girls involved in ‘bedroom cultures’. This
subculture was safe for girls. They could participate in their bedrooms –
posters, magazines, records, fan clubs. Concerts were rare enough to be
affordable on low incomes. Membership of the teenybopper type culture
also carried no ‘risks’ for girls. They didn’t have to engage with real boys
which especially in the days before the pill carried not just issues relating
to reputation but also that of pregnancy.
These subcultures could still be seen as girls resisting.
4. Girls are invisible to male sociologists who are gender blind. McR and G
are particularly critical of their male colleagues at the CCCS. They argue
that the male subcultures they researched were sexist and macho and
marginalized girls – at least in the public domain of youth clubs and street
corners.
Evaluation
See points above re Teenyboppers. McRobbie and Garber argued that the
domestic world of home and in particular bedrooms could not be ignored.
What McRobbie argued was that the gender dimension had to be considered
as well as that of class when researching/analysing what girls were doing.
She argues they had to resist patriarchal attitudes as well as the hegemony
of the dominant class. The ‘bedroom’ was a way of resisting the patriarchal
attitudes at home.
‘Ragga girls’ became very good at reclaiming and challenging male sexism in
public spaces.
5. Girls are in subcultures – the number of girl gangs is growing.
Studies of girl gangs in the USA by Campbell and Nicoll note that violence,
drug dealing, robbery and possession of dangerous weapons are common
activities carried out by young women.
Young women joined gangs to compensate for low status in their families and
communities and as an alternative to taking on low-skilled, tedious, lowpaid
jobs.

Mac an Ghaill found that although girls disliked the ‘macho’ attitudes of
the lads, they still chose them as boyfriends.

Sue Sharpe carried out a study in the 1970s on young women and found
that their priorities were domestic in nature. Work was something they
wanted to do to fill their time till marriage. When she repeated the study
in the 1990s, girls placed careers much higher in their lists of priorities.

Valerie Hey conducted an ethnographic study of female friendships and
found that working class young women tended to over-emphasize their
sexuality and use it as a tool against boys and men. They had very little
power to influence their lives and when they became aware of the effect
they had on the other sex, they used sexuality as a tool.

Heidi Safia Mirza pointed out that girls from ethnic African-Caribbean
backgrounds tended to resent the racist attitudes and behaviour of
teachers. They resented the fact that they were expected to fail, so
they adopted techniques to survive the system, and many of them actually
over-achieved against the expectations of the school. Thus, success was
used as a tool of resistance to oppression.
Questions:
1. Why have girls been ignored in the investigation of sub-cultures in
the past?
2. How and why might this be changing?
3. Why might girls have been invisible to researchers?
4. What is bedroom culture?
5. How might bedroom culture be different in the 21st century? Think
Facebook!
6. What girl sub-cultures have been identified?


Read this essay and identify Point Evidence Evaluation and Analysis PEAE
Create a colour coded mindmap of these points on A3 paper.
Discuss the view that females have little involvement in youth cultures. (30)
Sociological research into the development and nature of youth cultures has
largely been focussed on male involvement in youth cultures. For example work
on the skinheads focussed on aspects of working class masculinity. However,
Feminists such as Heidensohn (1985) have argued that Sociology has until
recently has been ‘Malestream’, and therefore females have been ignored. This
suggests that females have been involved in youth cultures in many ways but
that very little research has been done about them.
Structural perspectives like Functionalism and Marxism (particularly CCCS) have
been criticised for being gender blind and for ignoring female involvement in
youth cultures. For example they often portray sub-cultures such as Hippies,
Mods and Rockers as being a male phenomena with girls tagging along but not
responsible for the iconic images of the era. However a more detailed look
shows that there were clearly female hippies and rockers and even skinheads.
This implies that, because researchers were mainly male they focussed on other
males and were perhaps unable to gain access to study female youth cultures.
Since the second wave of feminism in the 1960’s more women were being
employed in universities and hence more female sociologists were emerging who
were able to conduct research on female youth culture. For example McRobbie
and Garber identified the ‘teeny bopper’ female culture which centred around
romance, fashion and ‘bedroom’ activities carried out by girls. This was
nicknamed ‘bedroom culture’ and was perhaps previously invisible to male
sociologists who were unable to gain access to the very private context of a
teenage girl’s bedroom. The work of Carol Smart (1976) can explain this culture
through the extra parental control which is exercised over girls due to gender
stereotypes. This suggests that girls’ involvement in youth cultures has perhaps
been invisible to researchers but the involvement has nevertheless existed.
More recent research has also identified the emergence of visible female subcultures. For example Blackman (1995) studied what he called the New Wave
girls who resisted male control and parental control and were non-conformist at
school. Other all-female sub-cultures have also been identified in the last
decade in the USA such as riot Grls and Sk8er girls linked with Avril Lavigne.
These female sub-cultures may reflect changing gender roles across this era.
However critiques of the feminist view also point out that most youth, males and
females are ordinary and are not member of youth cultures. Furthermore this
analysis ignores other dimensions such as ethnicity and class which may be more
important in the development of sub-cultures.
Finally in looking at youth sub-cultures which have emerged since the 1980’s,
many have been more gender neutral movements. For example Goths, Emos and
house and rave. The rave culture of the 1990’s was largely connected to dance
music and clubbing and was seen to cut across boundaries of gender, ethnicity
and class. In the Emo culture girls and boys are equally involved and practice
‘sexual blurring’ breaking down the traditional stereotypes. The Sisters of
Mercy are a famous female Goth band of the 1980’s and clearly shows that
women were involved in this sub-culture. However their neutral nature may
suggest that gender is not the most important aspect of these cultures.
To conclude, it appears that research into youth sub-cultures up to the 1980s
largely focussed on male involvement. This essay has shown that women may
have been involved in those early youth cultures but were largely ignored by
Sociologists. More recent research has found that girls are involved in subcultures of their own which were previously invisible, e.g bedroom culture and
that more female only sub-cultures are emerging. Therefore females are just
as likely to be involved in youth sub-cultures as males.