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A conventional wisdom in the lay sociology of sport journalism is that North American professional ice hockey players are disproportionately recruited from smaller communities and rural areas. One explanation given for this is that avenues for social mobility are more limited in such communities and that sport is heavily pursued as one of the few areas of opportunity. Sections of the sociological literature would suggest, though, that the opposite relationship may occur because larger cities have better opportunity structures for developing and expressing sport skills. These alternative expectations are tested for Canadian-born players in three professional leagues and for players on the last three Olympic teams. In addition, data for U.S. Olympic teams are presented. In interpreting the results, we also employ Canadian national survey data on mass participation of male youths in hockey. The findings show that the largest cities are underrepresented as birthplaces of players at each elite level, whereas small towns are overrepresented. Yet, community size does not appear related to the general population of male youths’ rate of participation in hockey. Emphasized are interpretations concerning how amateur hockey is organized.

Using national representative sample survey data from the United States and Canada, the authors compare American and Canadian responses to a set of 14 possible reasons for being active in voluntary associations. They assess the 14 reasons individually and then conduct analyses in which the 14 measures are grouped into two composite scales: collective reasons and self-oriented motivations. The authors also consider theories for explaining how and why Americans and Canadians might differ in their motivations for volunteering. Analyses are conducted on seven background predictors: gender, race, religious affiliation, religious attendance, age, education, and socioeconomic status. Findings show that Americans are more likely than Canadians to mention altruistic rather than personal reasons for joining voluntary organizations, and Canadians are slightly more likely than Americans to emphasize personal reasons for their volunteer work, but this difference is not significant after controls. The implications of the findings for understanding voluntary activity in the two nations are discussed.

This study focuses on gender segregation and its implications for the salaries assigned to male‐ and female‐typed jobs. We used a between‐subjects design to examine whether participants would assign different pay to 3 types of jobs wherein the actual responsibilities and duties carried out by men and women were the same, but the job was situated in either a traditionally masculine or traditionally feminine domain. We found pay differentials between jobs defined as “male” and “female,” which suggest that gender‐based discrimination, arising from occupational stereotyping and the devaluation of the work typically done by women, influences salary allocation. The ways in which the results fit with contemporary theorizing about sexism and with the shifting standards model (Biernat, 1995, 2003) are discussed.