Gender in Coed Team Sports: A Social Psychological Perspective

Coed team sports typically offer different experiences for women and men. Though scholars have documented gender imbalances in participation within such teams, the social psychological processes at play and the broader consequences of unequal participation have rarely been explored. In this paper, the authors revisit coed team sports through the lens of status construction theory and expectation states theory to suggest that coed teams reinforce gendered notions of worth, prestige, and competence in the field of sport. The authors draw on research showing that mixed-sex settings where people must cooperate to achieve a common goal are especially prone to the reproduction of gender stereotypes. This paper builds bridges between two subfields of sociology and illuminates gender dynamics in a coed sport that has not been previously studied (futsal).