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Rape-supportive attitudes and sexual victimization experiences of sorority and
nonsorority women
Date: 1993
Author: Linda Kalof
Publication: Sex Roles: A Journal of Research. Volume: 29. Issue: 11-12
A growing body of literature has documented the serious problem of sexual aggression on
college campuses (e.g., Koss & Oros, 1982; Miller & Marshall, 1987; Muehlenhard &
Linton, 1987). And there is evidence that the incidence of date rape has remained
relatively stable since the early 1980s (Johnson, Palileo, & Gray, 1992). In the search for
factors associated with sexual assault and victimization, some researchers have
investigated individuals and the attitudes and beliefs that sustain sexual violence
(Garrett-Gooding & Senter, 1987; Kalof & Cargill, 1991; Malamuth, 1981; Muehlenhard
& Linton, 1987; Poppen & Segal, 1988). Others have drawn attention to the ways in
which rape-supportive attitudes form part of a general cultural orientation toward sexual
assault (Burt, 1980) and the institutional and organizational aspects of the culture that
support and sustain sexual aggression and female victimization (Gwartney-Gibbs &
Stockard, 1989; Martin & Hummer, 1989; O'Sullivan, 1991; Sanday, 1990). For example,
fraternities have been described as organizations that provide a cultural context that
generates and reinforces beliefs and values that subordinate women and encourage sexual
aggression (Martin & Hummer, 1989; Sanday, 1990). Compared to other male students,
fraternity men have been found to hold more stereotyped attitudes about gender roles
(Kalof & Cargill, 1991) and to be more sexually aggressive (Garrett-Gooding & Senter,
1987; Kirkpatrick & Kanin, 1957).
However, the role of sororities in either perpetuating or inhibiting the sexual
victimization of college women has not been closely examined. With few exceptions,
researchers have given inadequate attention to comparing sorority and nonsorority
women on sexual attitudes or on sexual experiences. There is some evidence, however,
that sorority women are different from other college women in their attitudes about
gender roles (Kalof & Cargill, 1991) and in their experiences with sexual victimization
(Kirkpatrick & Kanin, 1957). I explore and further clarify the possible links between
sorority membership, sexual attitudes, and experiences with sexual victimization.
BACKGROUND
Perhaps the most important line of research for linking individual psychology to sexual
aggression and violence follows from the work of Burt (1980). She used social
psychological and feminist theory to develop attitude scales in an exploration of cultural
myths and supports for rape. In particular, she argued that four key belief systems (sex
role stereotyping, adversarial sexual beliefs, acceptance of interpersonal violence, and
acceptance of rape myths) form part of a larger cultural orientation toward sexual assault.
Sex role stereotyping consists of a set of beliefs that support traditional ideas about
appropriate masculine and feminine behaviors. Adversarial sexual beliefs are the
expectation that sexual relationships are basically exploitative, and that each partner is
manipulative, sly, and not to be trusted. Acceptance of interpersonal violence measures
the belief that force and coercion are legitimate ways to get compliance from women in
intimate and sexual situations. Rape myth acceptance refers to stereotyped, prejudicial, or
false beliefs about rape that blame victims for their own victimization. These scales have
been linked with sexual aggression in a number of studies (see, for example, Malamuth,
1981; Muehlenhard & Linton, 1987).
There is some evidence that rape-supportive attitudes, sexual aggression, and sexual
victimization are learned and legitimized in certain peer group cultures. For example,
fraternities have been found to sustain belief systems that legitimize gender stereotyping,
male sexual aggression, and female victimization (Gwartney-Gibbs & Stockard, 1989).
Some researchers claim that fraternity life is based on a long-standing tradition of
subordinating, violating, and using women. Martin and Hummer (1989) argued that
fraternities operate in a social-cultural context in which violence, rape, female
objectification, and the use of coercion in sexual relations is commonplace. Fraternity
brotherhood emphasizes traditional, stereotypical conceptions of masculinity and
femininity, and women are used to benefit the fraternity, primarily as bait for new
members, as servers to "take care of the guys," and as sexual prey (Martin & Hummer,
1989, pp. 466-468). In her extensive study of fraternity gang rape, Sanday (1990)
concluded that group rape and the use of women as pawns in sexual games are fraternity
rituals that establish not only the sexual dominance of men over women but also the
compulsive heterosexuality of the brothers.
But while the evidence accumulates concerning the violent and sexist context of college
fraternities, little is known about the cultural context of sororities. Sororities may play a
participatory role in legitimizing fraternity sexual aggressiveness. For example, Sanday
(1990, p. 105) recounted the gang sexual assault of an 18-year-old sorority pledge during
a fraternity party that she was required to attend to fulfill her sorority pledge obligations.
Thus, sororities may provide to fraternities the women who are used, according to Martin
and Hummer (1989), as "sexual servers." Indeed, on some campuses sororities have
developed subtle ways to combine the sorority image of "good girls" with contemporary
sexual liberation. A sorority woman described the unofficial rules to achieving
"successful sorority sex," in Moffatt (1989): no public display of sex (take it upstairs), use
discretion when staying at a fraternity (don't make a scene as you go upstairs, don't roam
the hails half naked), don't stay for breakfast with the brothers, avoid riding on campus
transportation "the morning after your fraternal slumber party," and "never participate in
group sex (it will make you as well as everyone else in the house extremely famous)"
(Moffatt, 1989, pp. 262-263).
On the other hand, sorority membership may provide some protection against male sexual
aggression, with the sorority-fraternity relationship guided by norms that limit the amount
of sexual coercion inflicted on little-sisters by big-brothers (Garrett-Gooding & Senter,
1987, p. 365). O'Sullivan (1991) also argued that sorority membership may provide a
shelter from sexual assault. As social insiders who share with fraternity men a social
milieu, sorority women know the group norms and learn early from their sisters what
different behaviors symbolize in the subculture, e.g., "getting drunk is taken by the men
as a signal of availability" (O'Sullivan, 1991, pp. 150-151).
But research has found that sorority women experience a high incidence of sexual assault.
Copenhaver and Grauerholz (1991) conducted an extensive study of sorority women at a
large university and reported a high rate of victimization among their sample. Almost
50% of 140 sorority women reported some form of sexual coercion, 24% had experienced
attempted rape, and 17% were victims of completed rape. The majority of the reported
experiences with sexual coercion were inflicted by a fraternity member and/or during a
fraternity function. Further, sorority members who were more active in Greek life were
more likely than less active members to experience attempted or completed rapes during
fraternity functions or by fraternity members (Copenhaver & Grauerholz, 1991). Rivera
and Regoli (1987) also reported a high incidence of sexual assault among a random
survey of sorority women (51% had experienced forced touching, 35% had experienced
an attempt at vaginal, oral, or anal penetration, and 17% had experienced full
penetration).
While these studies have enhanced our understanding of sexual victimization among
sorority women, without a comparison group it remains unclear if sorority women are in
fact different from other college women in their experiences with victimization. There is
evidence that sorority women are different from other college women in attitudes. For
example, in a study of gender role attitudes among Greek and independent students,
Kalof and Cargill (1991) found sorority women to be significantly more likely than
nonsorority women to subscribe to traditional gender role attitudes about male dominance
and female submissiveness. However, prior research has provided ambiguous evidence
about the relationship between sorority membership and sexual victimization. It has been
suggested that sorority women are at higher risk of assault than nonsorority women
because they date more (Kirkpatrick & Kanin, 1957), and most sorority women date and
interact with fraternity men (Copenhaver & Grauerholz, 1991; Larson & Leslie, 1968;
Scott, 1965). More than 30 years ago, Kirkpatrick and Kanin (1957) found that, when
compared to other college women, sorority members were somewhat more likely to
experience "mild" forms of sexual assault. But in a recent study of college students and
sexual aggression, Garrett-Gooding and Senter (1987) found that the amount of sexual
victimization experienced by sorority women was no different than the amount
experienced by nonsorority women.
In this work, I offer an important contribution to the literature on college organizations
and sexual violence by comparing sorority women and nonsorority women on specific
rape-supportive beliefs and on experiences with sexual coercion. This is an exploratory
investigation of the differences between sorority and nonsorority women on four
rape-supportive attitude scales and on self-reported experiences with sexual victimization.
METHODOLOGY
Mail surveys were sent to a random sample of 553 of the approximately 5000
matriculating undergraduates enrolled at a state university in upstate New York in the fall
of 1990. After three mailings, 349 usable surveys were returned, representing a response
rate of 63%. The four-page, 80-item survey consisted of a number of questions
concerning gender roles and experience with sexual coercion. This study focused only on
the female respondents (n = 216) to the survey--195 nonsorority women and 21 sorority
women. While the sample of sorority members was small (10% of the women
respondents), the numbers were representative of the college population. Approximately
272 women (or 9% of the women students) belong to one of nine college sororities (three
nationals and six locals). (Prior to 1990 when the survey was conducted, Greek societies
on this campus had had minimal involvement with sexual coercion awareness/prevention
programs.) It is important to note that given the small sample size for sorority members,
only very substantial effects will be statistically significant. Small samples require more
striking relationships to obtain statistical significance and any statistically significant
effects are substantively important (Blalock, 1979, pp. 301-302). Since the vast majority
of the student population was white, there was no racial variation in the sample studied
here.
A comparison of sorority and nonsorority women on key background or subject variables
indicated that both groups were similar in age (mean = 20 years) and year in school
(median = third year). The two groups were also similar in rates of participation in
consensual sex, with 85% of nonsorority women and 76% of sorority women having
engaged in sexual intercourse when both they and their partners wanted to. The only
significant difference observed between the two groups was in whether or not they had
discussed sexual topics in the family while growing up. Fifty-seven percent of
nonsorority women had discussed sexual topics in the home, compared to only 28% of
sorority women.
Twenty-six items from the survey were used to examine student attitudes according to
Burt's (1980) rape-supportive attitude scales. Armor's (1974) theta scaling procedure was
used to test the reliability of the measures and to develop a scale score for each
respondent. The wording of the items for each scale, along with the item means, standard
deviations, and factor loadings, are reported in Appendix 1. All scales had reasonable
reliability (ranging from .62 to .77).
Thirteen items from the survey were used to replicate the Sexual Experiences Survey
developed by Koss and Oros (1982). Using 7 of the 13 items that dealt with forced, or
nonconsensual, sexual intercourse, four measures of victimization were developed for the
analysis, all of which deal with completed acts of sexual intercourse: social (or
nonviolent) coercion, alcohol-related nonconsensual intercourse, physical coercion, and
self-reported rape. Social coercion is sexual intercourse forced through nonviolent means,
and consists of the responses to the following three questions: (1) Have you ever had
sexual intercourse when you didn't really want to because your partner threatened to end
the relationship? (2) Have you ever had sexual intercourse with a person when you didn't
really want to because you felt pressured by that person's continual arguments? (3) Has a
partner ever lied to you to get you to have sexual intercourse? Alcohol-related
nonconsensual sex is sexual intercourse that occurred when the respondent was unable to
consent because of being under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Physical coercion is
forced sexual intercourse through physical violence and consists of responses to the
following two questions: (1) Have you ever had sexual intercourse with a person when
you didn't want to because a partner threatened to use physical force if you didn't
cooperate? (2) Have you ever had sexual intercourse with a person when you didn't want
to because some degree of physical force was used? Finally, raped is the third coercion
measure and consists of responses to the question: Have you ever been raped?
To control for the possibility that a given episode of coercion might be counted in more
than one category, each of the four measures were dichotomized. For example, if a
respondent had ever experienced any of the two events of physical coercion (forced
intercourse through the threat of physical force or forced intercourse through the actual
use of physical force) or if she had experienced both events, the value for the physical
coercion variable was 1; otherwise the value was zero. These measures provided
information on whether or not a respondent had ever been sexually victimized by
nonviolent coercion and/or by physical violence or the threat of physical violence.
Since this work is an exploration of the link between sorority membership and attitudes
and sexual experiences, the analysis focuses only on the association between variables;
no attempt is made to establish causality. Accordingly, cross-tabulation tables were used
to examine the association between sorority membership and the four victimization
measures, since the variables were dichotomous. Pearson's chi-square without Yates
correction (Conover, 1974) was used to test for association. The analysis of the
association between sorority membership and rape-supportive attitudes employed
multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA).
Table I.
Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) of the Four
Rape-Supportive Attitude Scales
Effect Test value p(F)
Sorority membership
Pillais test .063 .025
Hotelling's test .067 .025
Univariate F tests
Sex role stereotyping 3.34 .069
Adversarial sexual beliefs 2.83 .094
Accept interpersonal violence 9.07 .003
Accept rape myths 6.04 .015
TABULAR DATA OMITTED RESULTS
Table I provides the mean scores on the four rape-supportive attitude scales for sorority
and nonsorority women. Table I also presents the results of the MANOVA of sorority
membership on the four attitude scales and shows that the four attitude scales were
associated with sorority membership (p |is less than~ .025). The univariate F tests
indicates the character of this overall association. There was no significant difference at
conventional levels in the mean scores for sorority and nonsorority women on the scales
measuring sex role stereotyping (p |is less than~ .069) and adversarial sexual beliefs (p |is
less than~ .094). However, there was a statistically significant difference between the two
groups in the mean scores on the scales measuring the acceptance of TABULAR DATA
OMITTED interpersonal violence (p |is less than~ .003) and the acceptance of rape myths
(p |is less than~ .015). Thus, the findings indicate that there is an association between
sorority membership and attitudes that support traditional myths about rape and sex, e.g.,
that women like to be forced to have sex, that nice girls don't get raped, and that most
rape victims are promiscuous or have bad reputations.
Table II gives the breakdown of sorority women and nonsorority women on the three
coercion measures. Social coercion was experienced by 33.3% of the sorority women,
compared to 25.6% of the nonsorority women. A chi-square test indicated that these
variables were not dependent on each other (p |is less than~ .447). However, sorority
women were significantly more likely than nonsorority women to have had intercourse
when they could not consent because they were under the influence of alcohol or drugs
(47.6%, compared to 21.0%, p |is less than~ .006). Physical coercion was experienced by
28.6% of the sorority women and 10.8% of the nonsorority women, indicating that there
was a statistically significant relationship between having ever experienced physical
coercion and sorority membership (p |is less than~ .019). Nineteen percent of the sorority
women reported that they had ever been raped, compared to 7.1% of the nonsorority
women, but this relationship was not significant at conventional levels (p |is less than~
.057). These results also show that many women who had been physically forced to have
sexual intercourse did not always perceive themselves as having been raped (Koss, 1985).
CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study indicate that sorority membership is associated with conservative
and traditional attitudes about gender, sexuality, and rape. Compared to other college
women, sorority members held more stereotyped attitudes about the acceptance of
interpersonal violence and the acceptance of rape myths. There was no statistically
significant difference between sorority and nonsorority women in sex role stereotyping or
in the belief that sexual relations are adversarial.
Sorority membership was also associated with significantly higher rates of sexual
victimization in two of the four sexual victimization categories--alcohol-related
nonconsensual sex and physical coercion. There was no significant difference at
conventional levels between sorority women and nonsorority women in their reported
experience with rape or in victimization by social coercion. Regardless of sorority
affiliation, college women were particularly vulnerable to social pressures to have sex.
This finding is consistent with reports that social coercion is a common experience
among college students. For example, Komarovsky (1985, p. 274) observed that social
pressures to have sex was a "frequently expressed grievance" among college women.
Many college women reported that men pressured them to have casual sex, and some
women even felt pressured by other women to become sexually experienced
(Komarovsky, 1985).
While I cannot disentangle causality with these data, a significant association between
sorority membership and certain sexual attitudes and experiences has been clearly
established. I offer some speculation for these findings. First, sorority women may be at
higher risk of sexual assault than other college women because they have more contacts
with fraternity men (Copenhaver & Grauerholz, 1991). And the use of alcohol is a
prominent feature of fraternity/sorority life and regarded by fraternity men as "a weapon
against sexual reluctance" (Martin & Hummer, 1989, p. 464). The connection between
alcohol and both sexual aggression and victimization has been documented in other
studies of sexual assault (see, for example, Muehlenhard & Linton, 1987). My finding
that sorority women were significantly more likely than other college women to have had
alcohol-related nonconsensual sex is consistent with these prior studies of alcohol and
aggression. This result also suggests that sorority women may be particularly vulnerable
to fraternity men's use of alcohol to get sex, although there is no way to establish this
association with these data.
Second, there may be a tendency for sorority women to oversubscribe to beliefs about
femininity, exacerbating characteristics that might make them vulnerable to sexual
exploitation and victimization. For example, it has been suggested that "hyperfeminine"
women have more experience with adversarial sexual episodes than women who hold
nontraditional attitudes and beliefs about gender roles (Murnen & Byrne, 1991). It is also
possible that women who experience coercion seek ways to legitimize these experiences
by developing or adhering to conservative attitudes about gender, sexuality, and rape.
(Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this insight.)
Third, because sororities and fraternities are sex-segregated organizations, perhaps
women and men are perceived as belonging to opposing, antagonistic groups (Thorne &
Luria, 1986). Although not significant at conventional levels, sorority women in this
study had higher scores than nonsorority women on adversarial sexual beliefs, e.g., that
heterosexual relationships are exploitative and adversarial. The marked effect of gender
segregation has been documented in the social world of youth cultures. Sexuality operates
as a powerful dividing force that patterns gender relations (Roberts, 1983) and renders
girls as possessions of their boyfriends (Brake, 1985). Competition over men and
relationships is a common theme in women's culture, and it seems particularly common
among young sorority women. In a study of high school sororities, Schwartz and Merten
(1968) observed that young sorority women adhere to a competitive, individualistic status
system in vital areas of interpersonal relations, such as rivalry over boys where "one
person's gain is another's loss" (Schwartz & Merten, 1968, p. 1120). In addition, they
found that young sorority women had a covert attraction to the "hoody, promiscuous
girls" who were considered to have "an 'unfair' advantage in the dating system" (Schwartz
& Merten, 1968, p. 1131). Moffatt's (1989) observation that some college sororities have
developed unofficial guidelines about how to have sex and still remain "good girls" is
particularly salient here.
It is important to emphasize that this study cannot establish that a causal relationship
exists between sorority membership and attitudes or experiences. There is a possibility of
a self-selection process at work in which women who have more stereotyped views of
gender relationships are more likely to join sororities, and in turn exhibit more passive
and submissive behaviors in those relationships. Indeed, sororities have historically
selected women who are status conscious and socially conservative, and these ideals have
remained relatively stable over time (Horowitz 1987). In addition, this study used the
standard experiences survey developed by Koss and Oros (1982), and therefore captured
the life experiences of sexual victimization. Thus, I cannot rule out the possibility that
women who have been victimized before college are more likely to join sororities.
Further research into the link between sororities and sexual aggression and victimization
is needed to better understand the connection between Greek organizations and sexual
violence on college campuses. This was an exploratory study, and the findings reported
here should be replicated with larger samples of sorority women from more diverse
colleges and universities. The sorority experience is undoubtedly different given the
particular context of a college campus. For example, on some campuses, sororities have
participated in education efforts to raise the consciousness of fraternity members on
women's issues, such as "fireside discussions" about rape (Bryan, 1987). On other
campuses, however, sororities have been observed to be timid about confronting complex
problems, suggesting that sororities "fear . . . any issue that might detract from their
social standing" (Horowitz, 1987, p. 279). Finally, in addition to better samples and better
measures of coercion, future investigations should try to establish, with longitudinal data,
the causal connection that remains elusive in this work. Sororities may provide a haven
for women who have experienced victimization, but they may also provide a context that
exacerbates the problem of sexual assault on college campuses.
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APPENDIX
TABULAR DATA OMITTED
