21 April 2023

‘Laddism’ and violence in a marketised sector

Alison Phipps and Isabel Young, University of

Sussex

21 April 2023

‘We reassert that education is a public good that is and should remain free of perverse market incentives in every aspect of its provision’ (Sussex Against Privatisation, 2012)

21 April 2023

Hidden Marks (NUS 2010) found that 68% of university women had been sexually harassed and 1 in 7 had been subject to a serious physical or sexual assault, during their studies

Research summary

• Commissioned by NUS to provide a deeper examination of the phenomenon of ‘lad culture’ and women students’ experiences with it

• Literature review on ‘lad culture’ and gender in HE more broadly, and focus groups (4) and interviews (21) with 40 women students in England and Scotland

• Sample self-selecting and largely made up of white middle class undergraduates between 18 and 25, but there was some diversity in relation to level of study, age, ethnicity, social class and sexual orientation

• 'a lot of lad culture is based on just competition. It doesn’t matter what it is, drinking competitions, pulling competitions, like being the biggest twat competitions' (FG participant I)

• '[lads] all act like they are the ‘alpha male’ and their main aim of a night out is to ‘get with a girl’ or ‘pull a girl’ (Interviewee 21)

• ‘One group [of lads] used to compete to see how many numbers they could get of girls in a night - they used to put them on tissue paper “so the girls can't text us and get clingy” – [and then] throw these tissues away’ (Interviewee 8)

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‘if a guy decides a girl is his, whether she likes him or not, no one else is going to get with her because they all know that the leader of the pack has decided, he kind of owns them’ (Interviewee 10)

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‘On their initiations if they are drinking and if they need to go to the toilet so much they have to go and piss on one of their teammates in the centre of the room’ (Interviewee 20)

‘As opposed to helping him, as opposed to getting him to bed, as opposed to any of that…chairs were piled on him, take a picture of him Facebook it, the next morning so everyone could see. It’s like you don’t, you’ve lost that caring’ (FG participant H)

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‘They think it’s going to be this great thing where the girls are going to be up for doing whatever they want and the style of the sex as well, I think they imagine it’s going to be all them just proper going at it and the girl is just there for them to just go at and it’s just like ‘yuck, noo!’, kind of objectifying, like women are the object, they are there just for them to use as they feel fit’ ((Interviewee 10)

• ‘Laddism’ of course pre-dates neoliberalism, but is also responsive to prevailing social conditions so must interact with the neoliberalism of our contemporary HE sector

• Neoliberal masculinism, seen in managerial practices, can also be seen in student social and sexual cultures

• Gender differences and inequalities are magnified in the current climate, and market trends (outsourcing, dominance of PR concerns) threaten to silence students who find this problematic

• How can we ally our anti-marketisation and anti-violence efforts more closely?

21 April 2023