Mean Girls: Equipping Young Female Athletes to Handle Their Peers
Navigating the murky world of female rivalrous aggression
Participation in sport brings a host of psychosocial benefits, providing social skills, a source of friendships and a sense of belonging. A notable ancillary benefit of sport is that it provides a forum for in-person social interaction, which has never been more vital in an era when this is increasingly lacking. Team sports in particular are noted for their prosocial effects and participating in sport helps many kids to overcome their shyness and social discomfort. The arena of sport offers a sanctuary during the tumultuous teenage years, such that remaining engaged in sport helps teens to become more outgoing during this formative period in our development. Adolescent athletes of both sexes accordingly score higher on social functioning and various indices of wellbeing relative to their peers who do not regularly engage in sport. However, whilst it is undoubtedly a net good, participation in sport may bring attendant challenges and this is especially the case for girls. Paradoxically, sporting success can incur social costs for female athletes and they may also face other challenges arising from their participation in sport.
The influence of peers becomes more profound once kids reach adolescence and this is the phase when both the benefits and potential negative social aspects of sport are most salient. During the ‘tween and early teenage years especially kids are acutely conscious of social judgement. The desire for acceptance is strong and the imperative to fit in is never more keenly felt, so kids are extremely sensitive to how they are treated and perceived by their peers. Relations with peers assume greater significance and peer-to-peer social interactions attain greater potency with regards to their impact on kids’ wellbeing. Naturally, this extends to their sporting participation: the social element of sport is a major reason why kids choose to participate, whereas perceived support and peer influence are decisive factors determining continued participation or dropout.
Alarmingly, there is a steep drop off in participation coinciding with early adolescence and this is especially pronounced among girls. Social pressures and the perceived risk of negative social evaluation from their peers contribute to the higher rates of drop out among girls as they hit puberty. Clearly we need to do more to help girls to weather these storms and remain engaged in sport so that they can continue to access the benefits of sports participation when they need it the most. If we are to be successful we need to understand the challenges they face. In turn we can help young female athletes to come up with strategies to navigate these social pressures.
The challenges and constraints that female athletes must contend with when they participate in sport are quite different to what boys experience. For boys, competitive sport offers ample opportunity to satisfy their innate desire to display their skills and test themselves against others. Not only is this something that boys relish but it also brings rewards from their peers. By engaging in the contest and rising to the challenge they earn respect from team-mates and competitors alike and male friendships are often forged in this way. Participating in sport thus serves to boost boys’ social capital, offering a route to gaining status and enhancing their social standing among their male peers. Peer pressure for boys thus acts to support their participation in sport.
In contrast, peer pressure for girls is not so supportive and if anything has tended towards discouraging participation. Whilst great strides have been made in boosting the profile of women’s sports and perceptions regarding female engagement in sport are more positive than ever, the social incentives for girls remain quite different. For girls sport does not necessarily help their social standing among their peers. Whereas boys’ standout displays and accolades earned through sport are met with approval and admiration, for girls the response tends to be more ambivalent. Indeed, in certain circumstances displaying proficiency and achieving success may even become a liability.
The diverging social incentives and attendant challenges concerning engagement with sport for girls versus boys can be explained by our evolutionary inheritance. Thanks to our ancestral role, boys have an inherent desire to compete with each other but there is also an accompanying drive to cooperate and form coalitions. All of these traits are evident in how males engage with each other in the context of sport. Conversely, in ancestral societies females were extremely reliant upon the support and protection of the other females in the group. Maintaining the goodwill of their female peers was paramount given that social exclusion had devastating consequences for the individual. Given the precariousness of their position, it was wise to avoid overt displays that attracted too much attention as this risked inciting jealousy and retaliatory action from resentful members of the group.
Due to this ancestral history, adolescent girls still experience a strong imperative to fit in and retain the favour of their female peers, especially those with influence in the group. As in earlier times, standing out poses some social risk. Something that talented young female athletes must grapple with is that exhibiting superior abilities and enjoying extravagant success might bring plaudits but it could also invite jealousy and social opprobrium, so this must be negotiated with some delicacy. If their sporting exploits are earning too much favourable attention or they are deemed to be insufficiently modest, young female athletes risk becoming the target of negative attention and hostility from elements in teenage girl society.
One of hardest things to deal with is to be punished for your virtues. Clearly we need to prepare female athletes for what is a grossly unfair situation and do our best to equip and support them to navigate the social pressures they face.
Social competition and interpersonal conflict between girls might be less obvious to the casual observer (especially if the observer is male) but it is no less intense. Whereas conflict between boys is out in the open, female-female rivalrous aggression relies on stealth and subterfuge. Whilst boys are more likely to engage in direct confrontation, girls are more likely to rely on indirect and covert methods. Overt displays of hostility are mostly confined to nonverbal behaviours, such as dirty looks or shunning the other party by pointedly ignoring them. Girls certainly engage in verbal aggression, but most often this occurs when the other party is not present to defend herself.
For all that, female-female disputes are no less savage. Females tend to deploy underhand tactics, such as engaging in gossip that is intended to discredit the target and damage their reputation. The typical strategy is to undermine a rival’s social standing with moves intended to ostracise and isolate them from the group. After all, the ultimate threat remains social exclusion. In our technological age there are so many more weapons to choose from and social media has become a major vehicle for these assaults.
Whilst boys might be quick to engage in confrontation they also readily make up and move on afterwards. This facility with both conflict and reconciliation is evident in how male athletes engage with each other in the realm of competitive sport. A notable finding is that male athletes demonstrate warm and conciliatory behaviour towards competitors once the contest is over. For their part, girls tend to recall interpersonal conflicts and perceived slights tend to be seared into memory. Girls are more likely to hold a grudge and are much less inclined towards reconciliation, all of which is evident in a sporting context. In contrast to their male counterparts, observations of female athletes demonstrate that they are more likely to continue to exhibit hostility towards competitors even after the contest is over.
On the whole, female relationships in the context of sport are generally more healthy and less toxic than in other domains. Nevertheless, the same social factors and interpersonal dynamics are at play within female sport. As we have seen, female athletes tend to behave coldly towards competitors before, during and after the contest and they also face the prospect of scorn from schoolmates who don’t participate in sport. On top of all that, female athletes may also need to deal with friendly fire from team-mates. Girls are as attuned to catty comments and dirty looks from team-mates as they are from competitors. Navigating social dynamics within same-sex sports teams or among training partners in a squad can be tricky. In the case of individual sports training partners may also be competitors and likewise in team sports team-mates are vying for selection and game-time.
The cattiness of female society is renowned for reaching fever pitch in the high-school years. Whilst it may not be quite as intense, a version of high school can also be present in the social dynamics within female collegiate sports; however, the sting is far less as maturity brings greater assurance and perspective. Amazingly, albeit hopefully more rarely, these tendencies endure even at the elite-level. Female players at professional level have reported scenarios of team-mates refusing to pass to a certain member of their own team following a dispute. Similarly, I remember hearing from the spouse of a professional netball player in New Zealand that her team (one of the franchises in the premier competition) were engaged in a feud, to the extent that the back court (those playing in the defensive positions) had not spoken to the front court (the attacking players) since half way through the season. With that in mind, it makes sense to prepare girls to navigate these issues early in their sporting journey so that they are suitably equipped for what may be to come!
As coaches and parents, our objective is to help kids to experience all the good that sport has to offer whilst doing all we can to help them avoid or otherwise mitigate the less positive aspects. Finding a conducive environment is a big part of achieving this. When a young female athlete starts to express that they are no longer enjoying participating the first thing to examine is the social dynamics within the team or practice setting. The coach bears responsibility for stewardship over the environment but the other young athletes play at least as significant a role in creating the social climate. There may be a hostile and unwelcoming vibe despite the fact that no overt acts are taking place - and the covert nature of female rivalrous aggression also makes it difficult for a coach seeking to enforce a code of conduct. Before walking away from the sport we should encourage girls who are feeling disengaged to first try another team or squad to see if that changes the experience for the better.
The best approach to managing negativity from non-athlete peers is to rise above. It is important to put the worst case scenario in perspective: whilst the sting might still be keenly felt, the stakes of social exclusion are no longer life-threatening! The best advice we can give to girls (and boys for that matter) is to curate their social circle to include only those who want the best for them. By opting to surround themselves with positive people who are striving to achieve something meaningful they can make peer influence work in their favour. Those who feel the need to tear others down in an attempt to elevate their own standing at best merit only pity and should otherwise be disregarded. These are certainly not the people that young female athletes should be looking to for approval or acceptance. As the grown ups, something we can share is the observation that the cool kids typically do not fare too well once they leave high school, so being in their gang is perhaps not something they should aspire to.
Finally, humility is a virtue but modesty has its limits. We should encourage young female athletes to stand tall and express their athletic gifts in the sporting arena without hesitation and without apology. Equally, we should counsel girls to be circumspect with how they engage with social media, especially with respect to what they post to avoid attracting undue and unwanted attention.