There’s no “I” in team: Adolescent emotions as a space for organizing feminine identity

Despite the work that has been done to understand women’s subordinate status in Western culture, women continue to struggle to recognize their own worth and convince others of the same. The following qualitative research examines the ways that girls’ emotional socialization impacts their potential future success as adult women. I present a case study of a girls character development program, designed to empower girls through physical activity, as one important context in which girls are socialized into feminine emotional displays. My ethnographic data is drawn from three seasons spent as a coach and participant observer in the organization where I engaged in observations, interviews with coaches and girls participating in the program, and a textual analysis of organizational documents. I analyze emotional intersections in response to expressions of encouragement, negativity, and pride that highlight the communication girls receive about emotions, the ways those messages enable and constrain emotional displays and attendant gendered identities, and the challenges of providing girls with alternate narratives. I suggest ways that girls might be socialized into a wider range of emotion as a potential space for women’s empowerment. Additionally, I demonstrate the importance of youth as a consequential space for understanding the process of female development and empowerment.