The social impact of competitive sports participation for Latina adolescents

This is a qualitative exploratory study that incorporates twenty-seven junior high school girls attending a Catholic school. It examined how participants transcended traditional gender role norms and have also defied cultural norms through sports affiliation. Accordingly, gender role norms and the social impact of competitive sports participation was the main focus. Sixteen of the subjects were athletes and eleven of them were non-athletes. The non-athletes had a larger frequency of gender norm characteristics and expectations from their families, which served as a barrier to their participation in free time activities. All of the Latinas seemed to internalize gender roles; some just showed more resistance to such ideals than others. The group that showed this resistance was comprised primarily of athletes. This study found that because of their sports affiliation, the athletes were in fact able to transcend gender role norms while the nonathletes did not seem to do so.