Social Antecedents and Consequences of Gender-Sport Stereotypes During Adolescence

Abstract

Eccles' Expectancy-Value Model (Fredricks & Eccles, 2004) posits that the stereotypes endorsed by parents may influence their children's participation in leisure-time activities. This influence is presumed to occur through the mediating role of children's perceived competence and value given to the activity, predicting in turn dropout. Previous research is scarce relative to (a) the parent-child transmission of gender stereotypes and (b) the relationships among stereotypes, selfperceptions, and decision to drop out from an activity. We present three studies that examined gender stereotypes in the sport context to test these under-explored aspects of the model. Study 1 revealed significant links among perceived gender stereotypes in the social environment (i.e., general and parental beliefs), personal endorsement of stereotypes, and dropout behavior among 347 adolescents. Study 2 revealed no bound between stereotypes assessed among parents and 104 adolescent athletes. It further indicated that self-perceptions may mediate the relationship between 155 adolescents' gender stereotypes and intentions to drop out from sport. Study 3 involved 23 parent-adolescent dyads and revealed that parents' and adolescents' endorsement of gender stereotypes were not significantly related when assessed with explicit measures, but significantly correlated when assessed through an implicit test. Taken as a whole, the results of this set of studies suggest that gender sport stereotypes are conveyed from social environment to adolescents and that they can lead to dropout. The implications for parents and practitioners are discussed.

Associations Between Self-Determined Motivation, Team Potency, and Self-Talk in Team Sports

“…In accordance to this, some authors (Boiché et al, 2014;Sheridan et al, 2014) consider that social factors are very important in dropout and sport abandonment, and it may have been its trigger. Finally, regarding autonomy, as previously mentioned, some authors have emphasized the benefits of feeling more autonomous within the sport context (Chen and Wu, 2016;Cheon et al, 2015;Reynolds and McDonough, 2015).…”

Analysis of Korean Fencing Club Members’ Participation Intention Using the TPB Model

“…This shows that both men and women with more favorable attitudes toward fencing club participation were more likely to continuously participate in the clubs. Boiché and colleagues [ 44 ] showed that gender stereotypes could affect people’s perceptions and behaviors with regard to sports or dance participation. It has been suggested that men tend to prefer activities that require more physical movements and are strenuous and competitive [ 45 ], but in comparison, women prefer sports that require fewer physical movements and expose themselves to less competitions with others [ 46 ].…”

Comparison of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity levels between physical education, school recess and after-school time in secondary school students:

“…Meanwhile Viciana et al (2016) found that the Spanish adolescents accumulated just 4.4% of the daily MVPA these contexts as opportunities to compete, while girls might view them as opportunities to socialize with friends, especially in the unstructured contexts such as SR (Blatchford, Baines, & Pellegrini, 2003). A lower motivation toward PA in girls than in boys (Martínez-Baena & Mayorga-Vega, 2014) or gender-sport stereotypes (Boiche, Plaza, Chalabaev, Guillet-Descas, & Sarrazin, 2014) could also explain these differences.…”