Hens in the Cock House: Towards an Understanding of Female Identity Renegotiation Within a Male Dominated Marketplace Culture

This ethnographic study investigates a male dominated marketplace culture and finds that female participants have successfully renegotiated their previous passive ‘eye candy’ role within the culture. Male participants originally constructed female participants as ‘playthings’ – primarily as objects of male desire. However, following female participants’ adoption and co-option of masculine behavioural roles, they have redefined their role within the culture. Female participants are no longer viewed as playthings but instead as legitimate and authentic cultural members – ‘players’. This study suggests that within the liminoid zone of a marketplace culture that ‘player identity’ appears to be a more dominant behavioural influence than gender identity – each voluntary actor within the zone, regardless of gender, aligns behaviour according to the communal construction of authentic ‘player’.

Citation:

Brendan Richardson and Stephen O'Sullivan (2013) ,"Hens in the Cock House: Towards an Understanding of Female Identity Renegotiation Within a Male Dominated Marketplace Culture ", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 10, eds. Gert Cornelissen, Elena Reutskaja, and Ana Valenzuela, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 64-70.