Cultural Capital, Gender, and School Success: The Role of Habitus

Author(s): Susan A. Dumais

Source: Sociology of Education, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 44-68
Published by: American Sociological Association
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 I __.

Cultural Capital, Gender, and School

Success:
The Role of Habitus

Susan A. Dumais
HarvardUniversity
Studies of the effects of cultural capital on the educational success of male and
female students have reached coLtiadictory concusions, and few studies have
considered the role that habitus plays in educational outcomes. This article ana-
lyzes the cultural participation of eighth-grade boys and girls and presents a
model that includes a measure for habitus. Through a detailed analysis of cultur-
al practices that have typically been grouped together as a single scale, the author
found that female and higher-SESstudents are more likely to participate in cul-
tural activities. In addition, in both standard ordinary least squares and fixed
school-effects models, she found that cultural capital has a positive, significant
effect on the grades of female students, both with and without controlling for
Bourdieu'snotion of habitus. For male students, the effect is weaker and present
only in the fixed-effects models. Habitus itself has a strong effect for both male
and female students in all models. The author argues that traditional gender
stereotypes play a role in the lack of cultural participation by male students and
that female students may be more encouraged to make use of their cultural cap-
ital to succeed in school.
L~~~~~~~~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
ourdieu (1973:80) wrote: acquire cultural capital, a student must
have the abilityto receive and internalizeit.
By doing awaywith giving explicitly
to everyone what it implicitly Although schools require that students
demandsof everyone,the educationalsys- have this ability, they do not provide it for
tem demandsof everyonealikethat they them; rather, the acquisition of cultural
have what it does not give. This consists capital and consequent access to academic
mainly of linguisticand culturalcompe- rewards depend on the cultural capital
tence and that relationshipof familiarity passed down by the family, which, in turn,
with culturewhich can only be produced is largely dependent on social class.
by familyupbringingwhen it transmitsthe Culturalcapital, then, is comprised of "lin-
dominantculture.
guistic and cultural competence" and a
Bourdieu's theory of social reproduction broad knowledge of culture that belongs
and cultural capital posits that the culture to members of the upper classes and is
of the dominant class is transmitted and found much less frequently among the
rewarded by the educational system. To lower classes. Differences in culturalcapital

Sociology of Education 2002, Vol 75 (January): 44-68 44

Cultural Capital,Gender,
Cultural Capital, Gender,and
and School
School Success
Success
are reinforced by an educational system that
prefers these styles, leaving most members of
the lower classes with little hope of achieving
social mobility.
Of all Bourdieu'sconcepts, cultural capital
has become the most popular and thorough-
ly examined by sociologists of education.
Most studies have attempted to determine
whether Bourdieu'snotion of social reproduc-
tion, based on the intergenerationaltransmis-
sion of cultural capital, is valid, and, if so, the
role that the educational system plays.
However, by focusing on cultural capital,
these studies have ignored another crucial
component of Bourdieu's theoretical model
of practice: habitus. Habitus, or one's view of
the world and one's place in it, is an impor-
tant consideration in trying to understand
how students navigate their way through the
educational system. Studying cultural capital
while ignoring habitus leaves Bourdieu'sthe-
oretical framework incomplete in its practical
application. It is necessary to consider both
one's resources (capital) and the orientation
one has toward using those resources (habi-
tus) to implement the model of practice in
the educational field in the way that Bourdieu
intended.
It is particularlyimportant to consider the
functions of both cultural capital and habitus
when studying gender differences in school-
ing. Jacobs (1996) noted that much of the
mainstream research in the sociology of edu-
cation tends to ignore women, even though
gender is one of the main stratifyingfactors in
society. Bourdieu has been criticized for giv-
ing short shriftto factors other than class that
distinguish people from one another (Hall
1992).1 Indeed, many of Bourdieu's works
imply that gender is a secondary characteris-
tic to social class.2
Recent research has considered other strat-
ifying factors by addressing the role of race, in
addition to class, in relation to culturalcapital
(Farkas1996; Farkaset al. 1990; Kalmijnand
Kraaykamp1996; Lareau and Horvat 1999).
Gender, however, has been a neglected area,
even though boys and girls have different
experiences in the schooling system that may
lead to their different positions in society.
Although one may argue that boys and girls
receive the same cultural training if they are
45
45
in the same social class, their habitus may be
quite different, on the basis of their socializa-
tion and the views they form of the opportu-
nity structure available to them. Forexample,
while both male and female students choose
business over any other college major,
women are less likely than men to get
degrees in engineering, the physical sciences,
and computer science, all of which have been
traditionallyseen as male disciplines (Yupinet
al. 2000).3 Jacobs (1995) noted that 30 per-
cent of women would have to change their
college majorsfor women to be distributed in
the same manner as men. Moreover, Jacobs
(1996) showed that at every level of educa-
tion, women earn less than men; for example,
when both women and men have four years
of college, women earn .71 of what men
earn. Thus, despite advances for women over
the past few decades, there are many struc-
tural constraints to women's progress, and
gender socialization continues to shape girls'
lives.
Evenwith these obstacles, female students
excel in school; they repeat grades less often
do than male students, have higher gradua-
tion rates from high school, and are more
likely to attain bachelor's degrees (Jacobs
1996). This puzzle was addressed by
Mickelson(1989), who noted that female stu-
dents' achievement in school seems anom-
alous because the rewards associated with
schooling are still lower than those for male
students. Determining the effects of both
habitus and cultural capital on students'
grades will help sociologists understand this
problem.
The goals of this article are to join cultural
capital and habitus in a model of educational
success, as Bourdieu intended; to determine
whether cultural capital and habitus play sig-
nificant roles in educational success; and,
more specifically,to determine whether one's
gender, in addition to one's socioeconomic
status (SES), leads to different benefits from
cultural capital and habitus in terms of edu-
cational outcomes. The following two sec-
tions set up the theoretical frameworkfor the
article. First, Bourdieu's broader theoretical
framework, including his notions of habitus,
field, and practice, is discussed, and gender is
placed within this theoretical framework.
46 46
Next, a review of research on cultural capital
and school success is presented, with a focus
on research on gender differences.
CULTURALCAPITALAND
GENDER
Bourdieu's General Theoretical
Framework
Although culturalcapitalis an importantpartof
Bourdieu'stheory of social reproduction, it is
only one component of his theoretical frame-
work. In Distinction,Bourdieu(1984) noted that
capital, habitus, and field all work together to
generate practice,or social action.
The field, the setting in which practices
take place, is "a network, or a configuration,
of objective relations between positions"
(Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:97). Fieldsare
spaces in which dominant and subordinate
groups struggle for control over resources;
each field is related to one or more types of
capital. Indeed, Bourdieu and Wacquant
argued that capital does not exist or function
except in relation to a field.
Culturalcapital is one of several forms of
capital that Bourdieu(1997) described. Along
with economic, social, and symbolic capital,
culturalcapitalserves as a power resource,or a
way for groups to remaindominant or gain sta-
tus. Bourdieudistinguishedamong three forms
of cultural capital: objectified cultural capital,
which refersto objects that requirespecial cul-
turalabilitiesto appreciate,such as worksof art;
institutionalizedculturalcapital,which refersto
educational credentials and the credentialing
system; and embodied culturalcapital,which is
the disposition to appreciate and understand
culturalgoods. It is this third form that most
researchershave tried to operationalizein their
studies by showing students' interest in music
or art. Institutionalizedculturalcapitaldevelops
as a result of one's having embodied cultural
capital and successfully converting it via the
educational system. To appropriate and use
objectified culturalcapital, one needs embod-
ied culturalcapital (Bourdieu1997).4
In addition to capital and field, another
important concept for Bourdieu is habitus.
Dumais
Duma~~~~~~~is
Habitus is one's disposition, which influences
the actions that one takes; it can even be
manifested in one's physical demeanor, such
as the way one carries oneself or walks. It is
generated by one's place in the social struc-
ture; by internalizingthe social structure and
one's place in it, one comes to determine
what is possible and what is not possible for
one's life and develops aspirations and prac-
tices accordingly. This internalization takes
place during early childhood and is a primar-
ily unconscious process.5
The consequences of the development of
habitus are large: Bourdieu argued that the
reproduction of the social structure results
from the habitus of individuals. On the basis
of the class position they were born into, peo-
ple develop ideas about their individual
potential; for example, those in the working
class tend to believe that they will remain in
the working class. These beliefs are then
externalized into actions that lead to the
reproduction of the class structure.
Overall,then, one's practices or actions are
the result of one's habitus and capital within
a given field. In terms of schooling, Bourdieu
and Wacquant (1992) described the school
system as a field. Doing one's schoolwork and
attempting to get good grades are kinds of
practices in this field. Within the educational
field, the most valuable form of capital is cul-
tural capital: "academic success is directly
dependent upon cultural capital and on the
inclination to invest in the academic market"
(Bourdieu 1973:96). Both Bourdieu (1984)
and DiMaggio and Useem (1978) found that
within the dominant classes, teachers have
the most culturalcapital, value it, and tend to
rewardstudents who possess it. Childrenwho
have more cultural capital (having been
exposed to it from birth in their upper mid-
dle- and upper-class families) feel more com-
fortable in school, communicate easily with
teachers, and are therefore more likely to do
well in school (De Graaf, De Graaf, and
Kraaykamp2000). Lower-class students, on
the other hand, find the school environment
different from their home environment and
lack the capital necessary to fit in as well as
the higher-SESstudents.6
Habitus also plays a large role in students'
success in school, but with few exceptions
Cultural Capital, Gender, and C C
School Success
(McClelland 1990; Reay 1995), it has been
largely ignored by past research in the sociol-
ogy of education.7 Students' decisions to
invest in their education, study hard, and go
to college depend on students' place in the
class system and their expectations of
whether people from that class tend to be
successful academically (Swartz 1997).
Bourdieu (1973) argued that one's habitus
develops in relation to how much cultural
capital one has; a person from the lower class
is aware that people from that class tend to
have little cultural capital and that without
cultural capital, they are unlikely to succeed
educationally. Therefore, lower-class students
tend to self-select themselves out of the col-
lege-going track on the basis of their views of
what is possible and what is not. On the other
hand, exceptional students from the lower
class may see the accumulation of cultural
capital as a way to overcome the obstacles
that are typical for those in their class posi-
tion.
The foregoing description addressed class
differences in cultural capital, habitus, and
schooling. Gender differences, however, are
also relevant. Bourdieu (1984:107) stated
that "sexual properties are as inseparable
from class properties as the yellowness of a
lemon is from its acidity." As one moves up
the social hierarchy,he noted, there are fewer
differences between men and women, and
the division of labor is not as strong. Part of
the traditionaldivision of labor is that women
are the ones who are knowledgeable about
art and literature;in the upper classes, how-
ever, both men and women are educated in
these matters.
According to Bourdieu (1984), cultural
capital is important for women for two rea-
sons: Women make use of the capital for
acquiring husbands, and women play the key
role of transmitting the cultural capital to
their children. Men are more inclined to use
cultural capital for educational qualifications
and for getting jobs. These different uses of
cultural capital imply that social actions take
place in different fields for men and women,
with different forms of capital serving as cur-
rency. Bourdieu (1984:105) hinted at this
possibility:
47
In every relationshipbetween educational
capital and a given practice,one sees the
effectsof the dispositionsassociatedwithgen-
der which help to determinethe logic of the
reconversionof inheritedcapitalinto educa-
tionalcapital,that is, the "choice"of the type
of educationalcapitalwhichwill be obtained
fromthe same initialcapital,moreoften liter-
aryfor girls,moreoften scientificfor boys.
In other words, one's habitus, determined
by the availableopportunity structureor field,
shapes the type of class-based capital that
men and women have, resulting in gendered
forms of cultural capital (Laberge 1995).
Moreover, one's habitus is also gendered as a
result of the possibilities available to each
group. In her study of the occupational
expectations of men and women, McClelland
(1990) stated that men who have profession-
al ambitions are following their habitus, while
women with the same ambitions are violating
what their traditional habitus may be dictat-
ing. Thus, women may be less likelyto aspire
to do well in school or to go far in school.
Robinson and Garnier(1985) also noted that
while men and women may begin their lives
with similar class positions and cultural capi-
tal, the social reproduction process functions
in such a way that women attain less-privi-
leged positions than men do.
In the United States, many educational
inequalities between men and women seem
to be disappearing. However, as noted at the
beginning of this article, women are still at a
disadvantage. For example, even when they
have majored in the same subject in college,
women do not fare as well as men in the
labor market; the median starting salary for
female business majorsis $4,000 less than it is
for male business majors (Yupin et al. 2000).
Mickelson (1989) offered four possible
hypotheses to explain why female students
would continue to do well in school despite
these obstacles. The differential reference-
group hypothesis states that although female
students are aware of male advantage, they
base their successes on the successes of other
women. The Pollyanna hypothesis states that
girls assume that gender inequality is a thing
of the past, while the social powerlessness
hypothesis states that girls assume the oppo-
site, believing that education is the only way
48
48
to attain high-status husbands. The sex-role
socialization hypothesis argues that girls do
well in school because they have been social-
ized to be good and follow orders. Each
hypothesis depicts a different habitus that
young women may possess. Empirical
research is needed to determine how habitus,
in addition to capital, may affect the perfor-
mance of female students. First,however, it is
useful to review the research that has already
been conducted on cultural capital and
schooling.
Past Research on Cultural Capital
As mentioned earlier,the concept of habitus
has been omitted from nearly all studies of
culturalcapital and school outcomes; cultural
capital, on the other hand, has been studied
extensively. Despite the heavy focus on cul-
tural capital, no real consensus has been
reached among educational researchers
regarding an operationalization of cultural
capital. Lamontand Lareau(1988) noted that
even Bourdieu,who coined the term, was not
entirely clear about its meaning; thus, cultur-
al capital has been operationalized in a num-
ber of different ways. Mohr and DiMaggio
(1995:168) gave the following definition: "By
culturalcapital, we refer to prestigious tastes,
objects, or styles validated by centers of cul-
tural authority, which maintain and dissemi-
nate societal standards of value and serve col-
lectively to clarify and periodically revise the
cultural currency." This definition is vague
enough to allow a wide number of interpre-
tations, all of which connect to Bourdieu's
concept on at least some level.
The default has been to define cultural
capital according to the types of variables
availablein the data set that is being analyzed
and the researchers'ideas about how cultural
capital functions. The result is three main cat-
egories in which cultural capital has been
defined. The first and most common is to use
variables that indicate participation in cultur-
al activities, such as visiting museums or
going to the ballet; some studies have
focused on these activities at the student level
(Katsillisand Rubinson 1990), while others
have focused on the parents' activities
(Kalmijnand Kraaykamp1996). With this def-
Dumais
Dumais
inition, one can conceive of culturalcapital as
arbitrary, something established by one
group to prevent another from gaining
power. With regard to education, the capital
itself does not alter the students in any mean-
ingful way but, rather, serves as a "signal"to
teachers (who are predominantly middle class
and tend to have a high regard for culture)
that they will relate better to these students
and should promote them (DiMaggio 1982,
Farkaset al. 1990).
It is also reasonable to argue that cultural
capital increases a student's competence or
ability to the point where the student is more
successful in school without preferentialtreat-
ment by teachers. This argument is promoted
by the National Endowment for the Arts(NEA
Fact Sheet 2001), which noted that students
who have studied the arts for four years score
an average of 89 points higher on the SAT
than do students who have not. It is also
apparent in Shaw's (1999) notion of the
"Mozart effect," the belief that listening to
classical music leads children to become more
intelligent. Studies that have focused on such
activities as music lessons or reading
(Aschaffenberg and Maas 1997; De Graaf et
al. 2000) are examples of this interpretation
of cultural capital.
Finally,some studies have used measures
that seem more obviously reflective of SES,
such as whether the parents provide a specif-
ic place to study (Teachman 1987), or
noncognitive traits, such as the way one car-
ries himself or herself and communicates with
others (Farkaset al. 1990). These measures
support the argument that higher-SES stu-
dents do better in school, but do not really
address the process of social exclusion
described in the first definition of cultural
capital presented earlier.
There have also been conflicting conclu-
sions regarding the effects of cultural capital
on educational outcomes, in whatever form it
has been operationalized. Some have found
strong support for a cultural capital effect on
dependent variables like grades and years of
education attained (DiMaggio 1982;
DiMaggio and Mohr 1985; Farkaset al. 1990;
Kalmijnand Kraaykamp1996). Others have
found that particulartypes of activities, such
as taking long-term lessons or reading, matter
Cultural Capital,Gender,
Cultural Capital, Gender,and
and School
SchoolSuccess
Success
more than others for these outcomes
(Aschaffenberg and Maas 1997; De Graaf et
al. 2000). Still others have found no support
for a cultural capital effect (Katsillis and
Rubinson 1990; Robinson and Garnier1985).
In the literature,then, there is no consen-
sus on what culturalcapital means, whether it
has an effect, and what that effect is.
Furthermore, the literature tends to ignore
group differences, particularlygender differ-
ences. Much of the research has included
gender as a control variable but has not dis-
cussed it in any detail (see De Graaf et al.
2000; Lareau1989; Lareauand Horvat 1999;
Roscigno and Ainsworth-Darnell 1999). In
studies that have discussed gender, the find-
ings have not been consistent. For example,
Katsillisand Rubinson(1990) did not find cul-
tural capital effects for either sex, but
Teachman (1987) found that cultural capital
has a positive and significant effect for the
educational attainment of females but not for
males.
The most thorough analyses of the rela-
tionship between gender and cultural capital
to date have been by DiMaggio and Mohr
(DiMaggio 1982; DiMaggio and Mohr 1985;
Mohr and DiMaggio 1995). Using data from
ProjectTalent (a large data set of high school
students from 1960), DiMaggio (1982) found
that male students have low levels of interest
in cultural activities, while female students
have moderately higher levels. DiMaggio also
found that female students from high-status
families have the greatest return from having
cultural capital, a phenomenon he labeled
the "cultural reproduction" model, but that
male students tend to follow the "cultural
mobility" model, benefiting more from cul-
tural capital if they are from lower-status
groups. DiMaggio's explanation of the gen-
der difference is that high-status females are
culturally prescribed into the activities that
would give them cultural capital, while high-
status males tend to rebel against their par-
ents' cultural values; he further argued that
women may use cultural capital as a way to
attract high-status men. Using the same data
set, Mohr and DiMaggio (1995) analyzed the
intergenerationaltransmissionof culturalcap-
ital and found that gender has a greater effect
on the possession of cultural capital than do
49
any family background variables (including
father's occupation, parental education,
income, and household cultural climate).
Aschaffenburg and Maas (1997) used data
from the Survey of Public Participationin the
Artsfrom 1982, 1985, and 1992, focusing on
training in high cultural activities. Although
they noted that females are more likely than
males to participate in cultural classes, they
found, unlike DiMaggio (1982), that with
regard to making educational transitions, cul-
tural capital benefits male and female stu-
dents equally. They suggested that the
greater number of educational opportunities
that exist for girls today may be one reason
why culturalcapital is no longer more impor-
tant for them than it is for boys, as it was in
the early 1960s. However, since they used a
different dependent variable than did
DiMaggio, it is difficult to say whether the
gender differences in culturalcapital have dis-
appeared.
Thus, we are left with inconsistent conclu-
sions in the broader study of cultural capital,
particularlywhen considering gender. A more
complete empirical consideration of
Bourdieu's theoretical framework may help
sociologists understand more fully the roles of
cultural capital and habitus in educational
outcomes and how these roles may vary by
gender.
ANALYSIS
Research on cultural capital and school suc-
cess has been inconclusive. It is not clear
whether cultural capital actually affects edu-
cational outcomes and whether and why the
process of converting cultural capital into
educational success may differ for male and
female students. Furthermore, Bourdieu's
concept of habitus has not been included in
research on cultural capital and school suc-
cess, leading to an incomplete picture of how
Bourdieu'smodel functions.
In my study, I attempted to improve on
the previous research in three ways. First,
most previous studies have created a cultural
capital index, rather than considered individ-
ual activities separately, so it is not clear
whether one activity is more relevant than
50 Dumais
I
others. In my study, I analyzed participationmy main interest, I restricted the sample to
rates in several cultural activities by gender
white eighth graders; thus, further research
and SES before I created a cultural capital on the interaction of race and gender is nec-
variable, to determine if any specific activity is
essary.A sample weight was used throughout
preferred by higher-SESstudents or by boys the analyses to compensate for unequal prob-
or girls. abilities of selection into the sample and for
Second, most research on cultural capitalnonresponse.9
and schooling has not addressed differences The data collected for Project Talent and
that may exist between schools. Schools in used by DiMaggio (1982) contain one of the
rural regions or poor districts may not have most comprehensive sets of measures for cul-
the same access to cultural resources as do tural capital. While the cultural variables in
schools in other areas. Through the use of NELSwere clearlycollected with the intention
pooled within-school regression estimates, I of measuring cultural capital, they are not as
comprehensive as those of ProjectTalent. An
separated individual effects from school-level
resource-deprivationeffects. ideal set of measures for cultural capital may
include such things as the student's eloquence
Most important, by including a variablefor
students' occupational expectations, I opera-and his or her comfort in the school environ-
ment. However, the NELSdata set, like many
tionalized the concept of habitus to develop a
more complete model of Bourdieu's theory other data sets that have been used in studies
than has been evident in previous research. of culturalcapital,does not include such a wide
Habitus should have a strong and positive set of variables for cultural capital. It is true,
effect on the grades of both boys and girls. however, that the measures mentioned could
The effect of habitus may be stronger for also be seen as components of one's SES,which
male students because (according to gender- the NELSdata set has a measure of. Therefore,
socializationtheory) success and achievement by using a limited definition of cultural capi-
tal-participation in the arts-I make a stronger
should be part of their worldview, and achiev-
ing good grades can be seen as a step in thattest for whether there is actuallyan effect.
direction. For female students, the connec- I constructed culturalcapital variablesfrom
questions in the NELSparents' questionnaire.
tion is not as simple; as Mickelson(1989) out-
lined, habitus may have a strong effect for aOne set of questions asked: "Do you or your
number of reasons, ranging from a desire to eighth grader take part in any of the follow-
attract men to a belief that inequality for ing activities?" with the activities listed as
women no longer exists. "borrowing books from the public library,"
If cultural capital is as important as "attending concerts or other musical events,"
Bourdieu (1973) argued it is for educational and "going to art museums." Another set of
outcomes, then a cultural capital effect questions was related to whether students
should be present even after habitus is addedtook lessons in high cultural activities: "Has
to the model, and it should be present for your eighth grader ever taken classes outside
of school in one of the following activities?"
both boys and girls. If the effect is bigger for
with the activities listed as "artclasses outside
one group or the other, it will be important to
explain how and why this difference occurs of school," "music classes outside of school,"
and whether new indicators should be devel- and "dance classes outside of school."10
oped that take gender differences into The total number of students' cultural
account. activities asked about in NELS,then, is six. In
some cases, these activities are studied sepa-
Data and Variables rately in the following analyses. Culturalcapi-
tal in this study is simply the sum of the num-
The data I used were from the first panel of ber of activities in which the student partici-
the National Education Longitudinal Study pates. For each student, the cultural capital
(NELS),a survey based on a nationally repre- variable can range from zero (participating in
sentative sample of 24,599 eighth-grade no activities) to six (participating in all the
respondents in 1988.8 Because gender was activities listed).
CulturalCapital,Gender,and SchoolSuccess Si
51

It is extremely difficult to represent one's
habitus, or worldview, in a single variable, or
even a large set of variables. However, one
component of habitus is one's beliefs about
the future. McClelland (1990) operational-
ized habitus as students' occupational aspira-
tions, particularlywhether or not they aspired
to upper-white-collar jobs. I do the same
here, with the dummy variable students'
expectations representing whether or not the
student said that he or she expected to have
one of the following occupations at age 30:
professional, managerial, or business; busi-
ness owner; or science or engineering.l1
The variable SES is a composite measure
developed by NELS,using data from the par-
ent's questionnaire (or, if missing, from the
student's questionnaire), incorporating moth-
er's and father's educational levels, mother's
and father's occupations, and family income.
For ability, the standardized scores from the
cognitive tests in mathematics, reading, sci-
ence, and history that were given to the base-
year students were averaged. The variable
GPA(grade point average) is an average of
the self-reported grades for each student in
English, mathematics, science, and social
studies on a scale from .5 (mostly below D) to
4 (mostly A's), thus approximating the stan-
dard 0-4.0 GPA system that many schools
use. Students were asked to report their
grades from the sixth grade until the time of
the survey.
Table 1. Means and Standard Deviations for VariablesUsed in the Analyses
Table 1 shows the means and standard
deviations for the main variables. A correla-
tion matrix of all the variables used in this
study is presented in the appendix.12
RESULTS
CulturalParticipation and
Occupational Expectations
Table 2 shows the cultural participation levels
of the boys and girls in general and by SES.
Overall, the girls outnumbered the boys in
every activity, with differences as great as 30
percentage points (dance lessons) and as
small as 1 percentage point (art lessons). For
both the boys and girls, the most popular
activity was going to the library for non-
school-related reading: 80 percent of the
boys and 85 percent of the girls did this activ-
ity. Going to concerts and art museums were
the next most popular activities for both the
boys and the girls. It appears, then, that one-
time activities were more popular than
lessons, which involve more of a time com-
mitment. Nevertheless, more than a third of
the girls took music or dance lessons, and 47
percent of them took at least one kind of les-
son. The male students were much less likely
to participate in these activities, with only 25
percent taking any kind of lesson.

Variable Mean SD

Sex (0=male, 1=female) .499 .500

SES .010 .715
GPA 2.936 .761
Ability
(averageof 4 test scores) 51.735 8.711
Student'soccupationalexpectations
(0 = non-upperwhite collar,1 = upper white collar) .411 .492
Takeart lessons (0 = no, 1 = yes) .081 .273
Takemusic lessons (0 = no, 1 = yes) .276 .447
Takedance lessons (0 = no, 1 = yes) .182 .386
Go to the public library(0 = no, 1 = yes) .824 .381
Go to concerts (0 = no, 1 = yes) .672 .470
Visitart museums(0 = no, 1 = yes) .389 .488
Culturalcapital(range = 0-6) 2.228 1.448
Participatein sports(0 = no, 1 = yes) .706 .455

Note: The sample size variedby the question asked, rangingfrom 14,341 to 16,321.
Source:NationalEducationLongitudinalStudy,1988.
52
52 Dumais
Dumals

Table 2. Percentage of Eighth Graders Participatingin Different CulturalActivities, by Gender and SES

Activity AllBoys AllGirls

Artlessons 7.51 8.73

Musiclessons 22.06 33.21
Dance lessons 3.37 32.93
Any type of lesson 24.52 46.62
Libraryvisits 79.62 85.23
Concerts 60.31 74.07
Artmuseums 37.28 40.54
Mean numberof activities 1.94 2.52

Activity Low-SESBoys Low-SESGirls

Artlessons 3.20 3.01

Musiclessons 8.91 14.16
Dance lessons 1.79 14.10
Anytype of lesson 11.04 21.90
Libraryvisits 67.59 74.66
Concerts 46.75 61.17
Artmuseums 24.62 25.00
Mean numberof activities 1.36 1.72

Activity High-SESBoys High-SESGirls

Artlessons 16.28 18.35

Musiclessons 40.82 58.89
Dance lessons 6.47 54.99
Anytype of lesson 44.54 73.13
Libraryvisits 90.77 93.52
Concerts 75.15 86.22
Artmuseums 53.38 61.35
Mean numberof activities 2.63 3.45

Note: The size of the sample variedin responseto each question. The N for all boys rangesfrom 7,160 to
7,488; for low-SESboys, from 1,726 to 1,765; and for high-SESboys, from 1,785 to 1,912. Forall girls,the N
rangesfrom 7,112 to 7,464; for low-SESgirls,from 1,826 to 1,878; and for high-SESgirls,from 1,726 to 1,836.
Source:NationalEducationLongitudinalStudy,1988.

The patterns are slightly different when
SES is taken into consideration. In this case,
low-SESstudents were defined as those in the
bottom quartile, and high-SESstudents were
those in the top quartile. (As a point of refer-
ence, in the lowest SES quartile, the median
years of father's education were 12, and the
median family income was $17,500; in the
highest SES quartile, the median years of
father's education were 18, and the median
family income was $62,500).13 In the low-SES
group, the male-female differences were not
as large as they were for eighth graders over-
all. Indeed, for two activities (art lessons and
visiting art museums), the level of male and
female participation was nearly equal. The
largest gap between male and female partici-
pation occurred for two activities-dance
lessons and attending concerts-both of
which had a 12 percentage point difference.
As was true for all eighth graders, the low-SES
students participated in onetime activities
more frequently than in lessons, with 11 per-
cent of the boys and 22 percent of the girls
participating in any type of lesson.
In the highest SES quartile, there was a
strikinggap in the number of boys versus girls
who took dance lessons: 55 percent of the
girls but only 7 percent of the boys. There
was also a sizable gap between boys and girls
who took music lessons. Seventy-five percent
of the girls, compared to 45 percent of the
boys, took any type of lesson.
There was also a gender difference for
overall, aggregate levels of cultural participa-
tion. For the eighth graders as a whole, the
CulturalCapital,
Cultural Capital,Gender, and School
Gender, and SchoolSuccess
Success
male students were more likely to participate
in 0, 1, or 2 activities, while the female stu-
dents were more likely to participate in 3 or
more activities. The average number of activ-
ities for the boys and girls were 1.94 and
2.52, respectively. In the low-SES group, the
girls were still more likely than the boys to
participate in more activities, but the differ-
ence was not as strong; the average number
of activities for the boys and girls were 1.36
and 1.72, respectively. In the high-SESgroup,
the gap was bigger, with the girls, on aver-
age, participating in 3.45 activities, and the
boys participating in 2.63. The high-SESgirls
(8 percent) were also more likely than the
high-SESboys (2 percent) to participate in all
six activities.
In comparing the high-SES and low-SES
groups, it is clear that the SESgap was greater
than the gender gap for cultural participa-
tion. For example, high-SES boys and girls
were more than twice as likely to visit art
museums than were their low-SES counter-
parts. Within the SES groups, however, the
difference between boys' and girls' art muse-
um attendance was 0 percentage points for
low-SESstudents and 8 percentage points for
high-SES students. Even going to the public
library,the most popular activity for all stu-
dents, was far less likely to occur for low-SES
students than for high-SESstudents.
From Table 2, one can conclude that rates
of cultural participation vary by gender as
well as by SES.14Girls and high-SESchildren
were both more likelyto participate in each of
the activities taken singly and had higher
aggregate rates of participation. In asking
why SES is so important, one must consider
the role that parents play in a child's cultural
participation.15In many cases, it is the par-
ents who hold the key to children's cultural
participation by paying for lessons; providing
transportation to and from classes; or, as
Bourdieu (1984) argued, by demonstrating
an interest in culture to the children at home.
This is particularlythe case for the children in
this study, who were only in the eighth grade
and unable to drive to classes or cultural
places. Since these activities all take place out-
side the structured school system, parents
need to take the initiative. That is, they need
to be aware of the potential activities avail-
53
53
able, be willing and able to pay for these
activities, and make the time commitment
necessary to maintain such long-standing cul-
tural training. All these circumstances are
more likelyto occur in high-SESfamilies.
Compared to finding reasons for SESdiffer-
ences in cultural participation, however, it is
harderto explain why males and females with
the same amount of economic resources
would participate at such different levels. It
may be that parents, who have been social-
ized to believe that certain activities are more
appropriate for one gender than the other,
encourage their daughters to participate in
cultural activities but do not put the same
pressureon their sons; this argument is similar
to the one made by DiMaggio (1982) on the
basis of his findings with the Project Talent
data. As Mohr and DiMaggio (1995) contend-
ed, it is most often the mother who passes
down culturaleducation to her children;if the
mother has been socialized to believe that cul-
tural activities are in the female sphere, she
may be more inclined to teach her daughter,
not her son. Furthermore, a number of
researchers (see, e.g., Sadker and Sadker
1994; Thorne 1993) have found that despite
the women's movement, strong gender
stereotypes still exist among children and per-
vade the school environment. Particularlydur-
ing puberty and earlyyoung adulthood, males
may have a heightened sensitivity to main-
taining gender boundaries and a fear of get-
ting involved in anything that would be con-
sidered feminine. The extremely low propor-
tion of male students in this study who took
dance lessons provides some evidence for this
speculation.
On the other hand, participation in sports,
a more traditionallymasculine activity, is held
in high regard by male students; Sadker and
Sadker(1994) found that middle school boys'
sports were the most prestigious school-spon-
sored activity. In the present sample of eighth
graders, 53 percent of the boys participated
in school varsity sports (defined as sports
played against teams from other schools), 46
percent of the boys participated in intramural
sports (defined as sports played against a
team in the same school), and 46 percent of
the boys participated in non-school team
sports, indicating that sports activities are
54
more popular than all cultural activities
except going to the libraryand to concerts.
Conversely,44 percent of the girls participat-
ed in varsity sports, 39 percent of the girls
participated in intramuralsports, and 33 per-
cent of the girls participated in non-school
team sports, indicating that the girls were just
as likely to play sports as they were to take
music or dance lessons and more likely to
play sports than to take art lessons. As others
have documented (Lorber 1994; Thorne
1993), the stigma of being called a "tomboy"
is not as strong as that of being called a
"sissy."
Are these SES and gender differences as
strong when a component of students' habi-
tus-aspirations for a white-collar job-is
considered? Table 3 shows that a larger per-
centage of the girls (47 percent) than the
boys (35 percent) overall aspired to white-
collar jobs and that the difference was partic-
ularly striking within the lowest SESquartile,
where only 20 percent of the boys and 36
percent of the girls had upper-white-collar
occupational aspirations.The gender gap was
not as large within the highest SES quartile,
where 56 percent of the boys and 59 percent
of girls had such aspirations. As was true for
the rates of cultural participation, it appears
that differences in SEShave a stronger impact
than do differences between boys and girls,
but that gender differences are still present.
Although the finding regarding SESdiffer-
ences in aspirations is similar to that of
McClelland's study of students from the
National Longitudinal Survey of the High
School Class of 1972 (1990), the finding
regarding gender is different: McClelland
found that boys, who made up only half the
sample, constituted three-fourths of the
group who had high expectations. It seems as
Table 3. Eighth GradersWho Wanted a ProfessionalJob at Age 30, by Gender and SES
SES Boys
% N
All 35.27
Low-SES 20.06
High-SES 56.14
Source:NationalEducationLongitudinalStudy,1988.
Dumais
though there is some support for Mickelson's
(1989) Pollyanna hypothesis: Despite being
more encouraged than their male counter-
parts to participate in cultural activities,
female students' perceptions of the opportu-
nities available to them and of the roles they
are expected to fill in society have changed
for the better over time. How this habitus,
along with cultural capital, factors into edu-
cational success is analyzed next.
CulturalParticipation,
Gender,and Grades
In the previous section, I reported that cultur-
al participation and habitus vary by gender
and SESin interpretableways. In this section,
I test whether arts participation is a form of
capital that gives students educational advan-
tages and whether these advantages vary by
gender. In addition, I test whether one com-
ponent of habitus-students' beliefs about
their abilityto obtain prestigious jobs-has an
effect on their grades.
Bourdieu (1973) contended that the
school system rewards students who have
cultural capital; the ultimate reward is in the
form of educational credentials (institutional-
ized cultural capital), but along the way, stu-
dents with higher cultural capital receive bet-
ter grades and more attention and feedback.
Following DiMaggio's (1982) argument that
teachers favor students with more cultural
capital and thus give them higher grades, the
dependent variable in the following analyses
was the students' GPAs.16It is true that girls in
every SES group have higher GPAsthan do
boys and that students in the higher SES
group have higher GPAs than those in the
lower group. The question is, How much of
this difference is due to cultural capital and
Girls
% N
7,882 46.98 7,984
1,891 36.00 2,031
2,031 59.36 1,982
CulturalCapital,
Cultural Capital,Gender,
Gender,and
and School
SchoolSuccess
Success
habitus? (See the correlation matrices in the
appendix for the correlations between GPA,
SES, and cultural participation for boys and
girls.)
Separate models were run by gender.17
Standardized variables for SES, cognitive skill
(the average of four tests in reading, math,
history, and science), and the number of cul-
tural activities were used. Robust standard
errorswere used to adjust for the clustering of
students within schools (Huber 1967), and, as
mentioned earlier,a sample weight was used.
Table 4 shows the results of the ordinary
least squares (OLS) regressions on GPA for
boys and girls.18 In the first model, control
variables that have been used in previous
studies of cultural capital (DiMaggio 1982;
Katsillisand Rubinson 1990)-SES and abili-
ty-were run alone. One sees that ability is an
important factor for the grades of both boys
and girls; it is three times larger than SESfor
boys and more than five times largerthan SES
for girls. Clearly,ability has a strong associa-
tion with students' grades. In Model 2, the
cultural capital variable was included along
with SES and ability. While cultural capital is
significant for boys, it is only about one-fifth
the size of the SEScoefficient. Ability remains
the strongest of the independent variables,at
more than 10 times the size of the cultural
capital variable. These results are different
from those of DiMaggio (1982), who found
that the culturalcapital variable had an effect
of the same order of magnitude as ability.The
result for girls in Model 2 differs from the
regression that was run for boys. Although
the culturalcapital coefficient is small in com-
parison to ability (only about one-ninth the
size), it is relativelysimilar in size to SES,and
it is still statisticallysignificant.19
In Model 3, the habitus variable, reflecting
whether a student had high occupational
aspirations, was added. For boys, the cultural
capital variable is reduced even further and
rendered insignificant. For girls, the result is
quite different from the one for boys: While
ability is certainly the largest of the variables
(nearly 13 times as large as cultural capital),
cultural capital continues to have a separate
association with students' grades and one
that is almost the same size as SES.20The vari-
able that represents a component of the stu-
55
55
dents' habitus-the desire for an upper-
white-collar profession-also has a positive
and significant effect, second only to ability.
Model 3 is presented in the next column
with metric coefficients. As can be seen, if a
male student has high occupational aspira-
tions, his GPA increases by .196 points.
Having a habitus that foresees success in a
career in one's future is clearly influential on
one's grades. In contrast, if a male student
participates in a cultural activity, his GPA
increases by only .013 points, an insignificant
amount. Overall, then, for boys, no isolated
cultural capital effect on grades was found
after controlling for SES,ability,and the desire
for an upper-white-collarprofession.
For girls, the metric coefficient for cultural
capital is .028. This means that for each addi-
tional cultural activity a student participates
in, her GPAwill increase by .03. Despite the
statistical significance of the result, this is
actually not a particularlylarge increase. Fora
student's grade to change from a B to a B+,
for example, a change in GPA of .3, or 10
times that of the effect of cultural capital,
would be needed. In other words, despite the
appearance of a cultural capital effect for
female students, the actual change in grades
is minimal, and to make the claim that cul-
tural capital is critical for academic success
would certainly be an overstatement. As is
mentioned in note 17, although the models
in Table 4 indicate that culturalcapital has an
effect on female students'-but not on male
students'-grades, I cannot reject the null
hypothesis that there is no difference in the
effects of cultural capital on grades for male
and female students.
Clearly, the more significant relationship
for both boys and girls is between habitus (in
the form of occupational expectations) and
grades; regardless of gender, high expecta-
tions lead to higher grades. A student's
expectations are developed from what he or
she has experienced in the past and believes
is likely to happen for people from his or her
particular background. For girls, a student's
disposition or attitude about whether she will
have a professional job outweighs whether
she participates in culturalactivities. Forboys,
although participating in cultural activities
does not appear to have an effect on grades,
Table 4. OLSEstimatesof the Effectsof CulturalCapital on GPA

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Males Females Males Females Males Females

Cultural .021* .045*** .019 .042**

Capital (.010) (.009) (.010) (.009)

SES .122*** .073*** .116*** .057*** .096*** .049**

(.010) (.010) (.010) (.010) (.010) (.010)

Ability .378*** .421*** .376*** .41 3*** .358*** .398**

(.009) (.009) (.009) (.009) (.009) (.010)

Student's
Occupational .196*** .145**
Expectations (.018) (.016)

Intercept 2.888*** 3.062*** 2.892*** 3.051 *** 2.820*** 2.982**

(.010) (.011) (.010) (.011) (.013) (.014)

R2 .323 .344 .324 .347 .336 .356

N 7,738 7,776 7,738 7,776 7,503 7,622

Note: For models 1-3, the variables for cultural capital, SES, and ability were standardized. Sample weights and robust standard er
*= ** = *** =
significant at .05, significant at .01, significant at .001.
Source:NationalEducationLongitudinalStudy,1988.
Cultural
Cultural Capital, Gender,and
Capital, Gender, SchoolSuccess
and School Success
a student's disposition toward obtaining a
prestigious career does. Swartz (1997) noted
that in large differentiated societies like the
United States, where there is not as strong a
dominant culture as there is in France,cultur-
al capital (when defined as knowledge of and
participation in highbrow artistic activities)
may not be as useful a concept. In the United
States, then, it may not be so much whether
one participates in cultural activities, but
whether one has the habitus that leads one to
expect an upper-white-collar career, that
affects educational success and, in the case of
social class, perpetuates the existing stratifica-
tion structure.
Fixed-Effects Models
The results of the OLS regressions should be
interpreted with caution. For example, the
regressions did not control for the availability
of cultural resources by urban or rural area,
nor did they account for other differences
between schools. Some schools may grade
more easily than others, and mean SESvaries
by school. Many studies on the effect of cul-
tural capital on schooling have failed to take
account of these differences (DiMaggio
1982) or have controlled for only a few of the
variables that may be different across schools
(Roscigno and Ainsworth-Darnell1999).
It is important to control for school-level
variables. For example, although an SESvari-
able is included in the OLSregression,this vari-
able controls only for the SES of the student,
not that of the school. Schools from higher SES
regions may be more competitive than schools
from lower SES regions and may thus have
higher grading standards; this difference is
ignored in the standardOLSregressionbecause
a school-level SESvariableis omitted. Because
within-school SESis heterogeneous, an individ-
ual's SESmay not adequately measure school-
level SES.To account for these variationsacross
schools, then, a fixed-effects model is used to
rule out school-level differences (for an expla-
nation of fixed-effect equations, see Aaronson
1998; Greene 2000). The resultsof these mod-
els control for differences between schools,
such as region, SES, and the percentage of
minoritystudents. Table 5 presents the results
for boys and girls.21
57
57
In Model 1, the patterns are the same for
both boys and girls as in the OLS models,
although the coefficients are slightly larger
than the coefficients from the OLSmodels. In
Model 2, when cultural capital is introduced,
it is about one-seventeenth of the size of abil-
ity for boys and one-seventh the size of abili-
ty for girls. For both boys and girls, cultural
capital, ability, and SES all have a positive
impact on students' grades. In Model 3 for
boys, cultural capital has a significant effect
even when SES,ability, and students' expec-
tations are controlled for. This finding con-
trasts with that for the OLS model, in which
the cultural capital variable was not signifi-
cant. Therefore, after controlling for school-
level differences, culturalcapital does have an
impact on male students' grades. Still, it
should be noted that the level of significance
for culturalcapital is not as high as it is for the
other variables and that the cultural capital
coefficient is actually not that much larger
than it was in the OLS models, where it was
not significant. For girls, the cultural capital
variable is largerthan it was in the OLSmodel
and much larger than the coefficient in the
male regressions. SESis larger relative to cul-
tural capital than it was in the OLS model,
and the coefficient for students' occupational
expectations is slightly smaller than it was in
the OLS model. Interpretingthe metric coef-
ficients for Model 3, one sees that even par-
ticipating in all the cultural activities would
not raise a male student's GPAby a full grade.
According to the metric coefficients for girls,
the actual effect of cultural capital is also not
that large; a female student's grade would
not benefit enormously from participating in
an additional cultural activity. A combination
of high expectations (habitus) and high cul-
tural participation, however, would have an
impact on students' grades.
There are two additional items that should
be noted. First,the variable for habitus-stu-
dents' occupational expectations-remains at
about the same strength as it did in the OLS
regression, indicating that one's habitus con-
tinues to be an important factor in determin-
ing one's GPA. Second, the SES variable is
larger in fixed-effects Model 3 than it was in
OLS Model 3. In other words, after control-
ling for school-level SES,one's personal SESis
Table 5. Pooled Within-schoolRegression Estimates of the Effects of CulturalCapital on GPA

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Males Females Males Females Males Females

CulturalCapital .027* .059*** .025* .057**

(.011) (.010) (.011) (.009)

SES .153*** .105*** .146*** .085*** .127*** .078**

(.012) (.011) (.012) (.011) (.012) (.012)

Ability .396*** .433*** .393*** .424*** .376*** .411**

(.010) (.011) (.010) (.011) (.010) (.011)

Student'sOccupational .194*** .130**

Expectations (.020) (.017)

Intercept 2.892*** 3.067*** 2.897*** 3.053*** 2.824*** 2.990**

(.001) (.001) (.002) (.003) (.008) (.009)

N 7,738 7,776 7,738 7,776 7,503 7,622

Note: Formodels 1-3, the variablesfor culturalcapital,SES,and abilitywere standardized.Sampleweights and robuststandarder
*= ** =
significant at .05, significant at .01, *** = significant at .001.
Source:NationalEducationLongitudinalStudy,1988.
Cultural Capital,Gender,
Cultural Capital, Gender,and
and School Success
School Success
extremely important for influencing one's
grades, with lower-SES students being at a
disadvantage.
When between-school differences are con-
trolled, then, the result for cultural participa-
tion is significant for boys, but not to the
degree to which it is significant for girls; fur-
thermore, the difference in the effect that cul-
tural capital has on boys and girls is statisti-
cally significant. Looking both between and
across all schools, however, one sees that the
benefit of cultural capital for boys does not
exist, as shown in the OLS models. Habitus
matters for both genders, and the effect is in
the same direction for both boys and girls:
Having high occupational expectations con-
tributes to a student's receiving higher
grades.
While cultural participation may not be all
that beneficial to male students' grades, there
may be other activities that have a positive
effect. As was mentioned earlier, many male
students participate in sports, which are seen
as more socially acceptable than cultural
activities. Researchershave argued that sports
are associated with boys' academic success
(Coleman 1961; Rehberg and Schaefer
1968). Indeed, one could argue that many of
the skillsthat one acquires from taking cultur-
al lessons (being disciplined, managing both
schoolwork and outside activities) could also
be obtained from participating in sports.
Therefore, a set of analyses was run to see if
within boys' and girls' educational fields, par-
ticipation in sports serves as a form of capital
that helps students achieve higher grades.
Table 6 shows the results for both the OLS
and fixed-effects models, with a dummy vari-
able for whether the student participates in
any sports activities (including intramural,
school varsity, and team sports outside
school).
The results show that participation in
sports has a positive and significant effect on
the grades of both male and female students,
both with and without controlling for
between-school effects. Forgirls, culturalcap-
ital continues to have a strong impact, but
participation in sports is also significant. For
boys, participation in sports is clearly more
important than is cultural participation, but
culturalcapital still has a weak effect. Forboth
59
boys and girls, aspiring to an upper-white-
collar job-the measure for habitus used
here-remains significant.
DISCUSSION
Cultural capital does affect educational out-
comes, but in a limited way. Other variables-
including habitus-are more important to
grades than is cultural capital, which even at
its strongest will not raise a student's grade
noticeably. Inherent ability is the dominant
factor in influencing a student's grades, fol-
lowed by a student's habitus and socioeco-
nomic background. Cultural capital plays a
lesser role overall and, at times, plays no role
for boys.
An examination of cultural participation
rates showed that while SESaffects participa-
tion more than gender, the gender differ-
ences are still sizable. Girls receive better
returns to their cultural participationthan do
boys, but it is far from obvious why this dif-
ference exists. With regard to girls' higher cul-
tural participation, the eighth grade is a time
when boys and girls are becoming more
aware of their gender roles and of what is
socially appropriate for a male or female.
Studies ranging from Coleman's Adolescent
Society (1961) to more recent work (Adler,
Kless, and Adler 1992) have found that the
boys who are most popular in school are the
ones who have high athletic ability. In con-
trast, a boy who shows an interest in theater
or dance may be likelyto have his peers ques-
tion his masculinity.
Following this gender-socializationreason-
ing, it may be that male students who do have
cultural capital downplay it or disguise it, for
fear of being seen as "sissies."In other words,
within their field, their cultural capital may
actuallybe a liabilityin the eyes of their peers or
teachers, discouraging boys from translating
their cultural knowledge skills into success in
the classroom.Another explanationfor the dif-
ference could lie in the female students, rather
than the male students. A number of studies
(see Sadkerand Sadker1994 for a reviewof the
literature)have found that teachers tend to pay
more attention to male students than to female
students and that male students are more vocal
Table 6. Estimatesof the Effectsof CulturalCapital and Sports on GPA

Model 3
Model 2 OLSwith
Model 1 Fixed Metric
OLS Effects Coefficients

Males Females Males Females Males Females

CulturalCapital .027* .037*** .034** .049*** .018* .024***

(.011) (.009) (.012) (.010) (.007) (.006)

SES .080*** .047*** .109*** .075*** .108*** .063***

(.011) (.011) (.013) (.012) (.015) (.015)

SportsParticipation .232*** .129*** .230*** .148*** .232*** .129***

(.022) (.018) (.025) (.020) (.022) (.018)

Ability .357*** .397*** .380*** .412*** .040*** .045***

(.009) (.010) (.010) (.011) (.001) (.001)

Student'sOccupationalExpectations .194*** . 139*** .192*** .121*** .194*** .139***

(.018) (.016) (.021) (.017) (.018) (.016)

Intercept 2.645*** 2.903*** 2.650*** 2.900*** .489*** .504***

(.021) (.018) (.019) (.017) (.060) (.059)

R2 .359 .366 .359 .366

N 6,794 7,092 6,794 7,092 6,794 7,092

Note: For Models 1 and 2, the variables for cultural capital, SES, and ability were standardized. Sample weights and robust standar
* = significant at .05, ** = significant at .01, *** = significant at .001.
Source:NationalEducationLongitudinalStudy,1988.
Cultural Capital,Gender,
Cultural Capital, Gender,and
and School
School Success
Success
and active in the classroom. Possessingcultural
capitalmay help female students become more
visible to teachers or may give them the sense
of mastery and confidence necessary to
become more assertive in the classroom.
Gender-socialization theory (Kaufman and
Richardson1982; Mickelson1989) argues that
girlswant to win social approval,whereas boys
focus more on mastery.Girlsmay thus empha-
size their cultural capital in the hopes that
teachers will like them or consider them good
students. Conversely, boys are considered to
have a more oppositional stance toward teach-
ers and authorityfigures in school (Sadkerand
Sadker1994) and hence would be less likelyto
displaytheir culturalcapitalfor the purposes of
winning their teachers' approval.
Although Bourdieu (1984) and DiMaggio
(1982) argued that the main benefit of cul-
tural capital for females is the greater ability
to attract successful husbands, the roles of
women in American society have changed
greatly since the 1960s, when both
researchers' data sets were collected. Since
women are in the labor market for longer
periods and in better occupational positions
than they were 40 years ago, they may need
to invest more at the beginning to reach a
level of success that is comparable to that of
men. Thus, men may not need cultural capi-
tal to succeed (and it may even be seen in a
negative light because of its "effeminate"
nature) in the educational and occupational
markets, but for women, it may be a factor
that gives them an edge over the competi-
tion, making them more confident and
noticeable to teachers. This argument is in
line with the findings of DiMaggio's study
(1982), in which cultural capital within the
higher SES group had more of a positive
impact on grades for female students than for
male students. That is, high-SESmales, who,
by their position in the class structure, are the
most likely to be educationally and occupa-
tionally successful, do not need cultural capi-
tal as much as do females in the same class
position. Persell, Catsambis, and Cookson
(1992) also contended that it is necessary for
women to have both more of the same assets
that men have and additional assets that men
lack to reach the same level of attainment as
men.
61
61
These perceptions about the opportunity
structureand what is necessaryto succeed are
all part of one's habitus. With regardto oppor-
tunities for differentgender and racialgroups,
Bakerand PerkinsJones (1993:92) stated:"One
type of performance will add more to some
individuals'life chances and less to others." In
other words, women may have a habitus that
has been structured by society in such a way
that they believe that educational and occupa-
tional success are possible, but it is also true
that they will encounter obstacles as they pro-
ceed. Parents of female students may realize
that their daughters will have to put in more
effort than males to secure the same positions.
Acquiring and using cultural capital may be
seen as a necessarystep along the way to help
overcome some of the obstacles that being
female poses.22
Finally,it may well be that the typical cul-
tural capital variablethat has been used in the
sociology of education needs to be reevaluat-
ed. Perhaps participation in cultural activities
is not an adequate or appropriate measure of
cultural capital in modern American society.
The gender differences found here would
imply that, at the least, researchers need to
consider some different and more complex
components of cultural capital than simple
exposure to high culture. The work of Lareau
(1987, 1989) is a good starting point for
other ways of conceptualizing culturalcapital.
Because neither DiMaggio (1982) nor
Aschaffenberg and Maas (1997) included a
variable for habitus in their analyses, the
results found here may not be directly com-
parable to the results of their studies. In addi-
tion, while DiMaggio's (1982) dependent
variable, like the dependent variable here,
was grades, Aschaffenberg and Maas (1997)
used educational transitions as their depen-
dent variable, making a comparison with
their study more difficult. It is also somewhat
difficult to compare studies when, as was
mentioned previously, each study seems to
have used a different set of variables that
were labeled cultural capital. Furthermore,in
restricting the sample to white students to
focus on gender differences, I did not address
racialdifferences.
It should be noted that the role of habitus
may not be as clear-cutas was presented here;
62
62
it is difficult to determine whether students
develop a belief that they can obtain a presti-
gious occupation because they are already
doing well in school, or if the belief is what
motivates them to strivefor good grades. This
study is reallya first attempt to operationalize
the concept of habitusalongside the concept of
cultural capital.23 There are certainly many
other factorsthat constitute a student's habitus
than occupational expectations, and judging
from the significancethat this one small partof
habitus has on grades, it will be importantto
develop measures for these other factors in
future research.
There are several other directions for future
research. It would be helpful to have data for
siblings, so that cultural activity levels could
be compared for boys and girls in the same
family. Also, as was stated earlier,the interac-
tion of gender and race has not yet been
studied in relation to cultural capital and
schooling. Furthermore,data need to be col-
lected that will allow researchers to distin-
guish between Bourdieu'sconcept of habitus
as disposition and expectations for the future
and the more conventional status attainment
(Sewell, Haller,and Portes 1969) and rational-
choice concepts of expectations.
It is clear that we researchersmust be more
careful in using and operationalizing the term
culturalcapital and more willing to consider
the inclusion of habitus in our models. In the
United States, cultural activities do not seem
to affect all students the same way, leading to
the reproduction of society. As much as there
is a class dynamic at work in social reproduc-
tion, there is also a gender dynamic, in which
boys are expected to behave one way and
girls another. By their very presence, such
complex effects render simplistic culturalcap-
ital explanations less powerful. Future
research must take account of the other com-
ponents of Bourdieu's framework-habitus
and field-to test more accurately the pres-
ence and effect of culturalcapital for different
groups in the American school system.
NOTES
1. Bourdieu has written more extensively
and explicitly about gender, but until recent-
Dumais
Dumais
ly, this work was available only in French. His
MasculineDomination(2001), translated into
English,treats women's oppression as analyt-
ically independent from class and describes
masculine domination as a prime example of
symbolic violence.
2. One interesting interpretation by
McCall(1992:844) is that "secondary"can be
interpreted to mean either not as important
or that "gender as a principle of division is
secondary because it is hidden and it is hid-
den because it appears to be universal and
natural." This second interpretation gives
much more weight to gender as a stratifying
factor in society.
3. As Yupin et al. (2000) reported, 22 per-
cent of males and 17 percent of females
major in business, 12 percent of males and 2
percent of females major in engineering, 2
percent of males and 1 percent of females
major in the physical sciences, and 4 percent
of males and 1 percent of females major in
computer science. Looked at another way, in
1990, women received only 14 percent of the
engineering degrees that were awarded that
year (Jacobs 1996).
4. Most commonly, the argument is that a
high-SESgroup has the culturalcapital (in the
form of highbrow possessions and activities)
and prevents low-SESpeople from ascending
the social hierarchy.However,the power of any
kindof culturalcapitalis dependent on the field
in which the actors exist. In a differentfield, it is
possible that the (broadly defined) cultural
knowledge possessed by the lower-SESgroup
would be more powerful than any knowledge
of high art (Swartz1997).
5. To some, this has always seemed to be
the metaphysical process of early socializa-
tion.
6. Even lower-class students who manage
to accumulate cultural capital in school and
advance successfully through the school sys-
tem are easy to distinguish from their upper-
class peers because their cultural capital is
more "scholastic"and conservative than that
of those who were exposed to a wider variety
of culturalresources in their homes (Bourdieu
1984).
7. Furthermore,the studies that have dis-
cussed habitus (McClelland 1990; Reay 1995)
have not discussed cultural capital.
Cultural Capital,
Cultural Gender, and School Success
CapitalGenderandShoolSucessI
8. Questionnaires are available at the stu-
dent, parent, teacher, and school levels; for
this study, both the student and parent ques-
tionnaires were examined. The parent ques-
tionnaire was administered to the parent or
guardian who was self-selected as the "most
knowledgeable about the student's educa-
tional activities and related behaviors."
9. The weight used in the analyses is called
BYQWT.According to the electronic code-
book for the NELSdata set (U.S. Department
of Education 1988), "BYQWTwas calculated
from the design weight (RAWWT)for the stu-
dent questionnaire, adjusted for the fact that
some of the selected students did not com-
plete the questionnaire. RAWWTis the recip-
rocal of the conditional selection probability
for the student, given that the school was
selected into the base year sample, multiplied
by his or her school's design weight."
10. The parents responded to all these
questions with yes or no; therefore, it was not
possible to develop a measure of how fre-
quently the students participated in these
activities.
11. In addition to these three categories,
students could choose from the following
occupations: craftsperson, farmer, housewife,
laborer, military/police, technical, sales/cleri-
cal, service worker, other, not working, or
don't know.
12. It should also be noted that 87 percent
of the 16,321 students in this sample (eighth
graders in 1988) attended public schools, 8
percent attended Catholic schools, 1 percent
attended private schools affiliated with the
National Association of Independent Schools,
and 4 percent attended other private schools.
These figures are comparable with national
statistics; according to the National Center
for Education Statistics, 88 percent of stu-
dents were enrolled in public schools in 1985
(see NCESFast Facts2001).
13. Although only the low- and high-SES
quartilesare discussed here, the patter for the
middle two quartilesis what would be expect-
ed; the second quartilehad higher participation
rates than the firstquartile,and the third quar-
tile had higher participationrates than the sec-
ond quartile (but lower than the fourth quar-
tile). In all the quartiles,the participationrates
for girlswere higher than those for boys.
63
14. Although this study focused on stu-
dents who were white and in the eighth
grade, the findings regarding the importance
of gender in cultural participation are consis-
tent with the findings of Mohr and DiMaggio
(1995) and with Yupin et al.'s (2000) study
on cultural participation:Among high school
seniors in 1995, 46 percent of the female stu-
dents, compared to 35 percent of the male
students, participated in music or other per-
forming arts activities, while 63 percent of the
male students and 49 percent of the female
students participated in sports (Yupin et al.
2000:50).
15. Informationis available for three activ-
ities for parents: attending concerts, going to
the library, and visiting art museums. The
only activity that is affected by the gender of
the child is concert attendance, an activity
that parents of girls are more likelyto engage
in, regardless of SES (the difference is the
greatest in the lowest quartile, with 50 per-
cent of the girls' parents and 42 percent of
the boys' parents attending concerts).
Students' activity levels are highly correlated
with parents' activity levels (.706, p < .001).
16. The NELSeighth-grade teacher's ques-
tionnaire does not have any useful questions
about teachers' perceptions of students that
could serve as indicators of cultural capital.
These kinds of questions would be informa-
tive in understanding how cultural capital
translates into grades, and it would make
sense to include such questions in future sur-
veys.
17. A pooled regression was also run for
both sexes together, with a dummy variable
for female and variablesfor the interaction of
female and SES,culturalcapital, and so forth.
In the final OLS model, the t-statistic for
female*culturalcapital was 1.626, which does
not allow me to reject the null hypothesis that
there is no difference between boys and girls
in the effect of cultural capital. However, the
female*occupational expectations variable
was significant at the .05 level, indicating that
there are differences between boys and girls
in this regard. All the other variables in the
model were also significant.
18. All these analyses were also run with
Englishgrades alone (which could be argued
to be more directly related to cultural capital
64
than such courses as science or math) as the
dependent variable. The results were
extremely similarto those in which GPAis the
dependent variable;culturalcapital had a sig-
nificant effect for girls in the final model, but
not for boys.
19. DiMaggio (1982) included a variable
for ability (the score on a vocabulary achieve-
ment test) in his models. Katsillis and
Rubinson (1990) included a measure for pre-
vious achievement in their model of cultural
capital's effects on GPAand found that even
when previous achievement is dropped from
the model, cultural capital does not have a
significant effect. However, one could argue
that the ability variable is, in part, cultural
capital that has been accumulated in the past
and converted into cognitive ability. When
the ability variable is left out of the final
model here, the variables for SES, cultural
capital, and habitus are all significant at the
.001 level for both boys and girls; however,
the R-squaredfor the model drops to .167 for
boys and .158 for girls.
20. This finding is quite striking, consider-
ing that the measurement error for the cul-
tural capital variablewould be expected to be
Dumais
Dumais
largerthan that for SES(and thus it would be
less likely for cultural capital to appear as a
significant variable).
21. Again, a pooled regression was also
run for both sexes together, with a dummy
variablefor female and variablesfor the inter-
action of female and SES,culturalcapital, and
so forth. In this case, all the variables in the
model, including female*cultural capital and
female*occupational expectations, were sig-
nificant, indicating that after school effects
are controlled, there are real gender differ-
ences in the effects of cultural capital and
habitus on grades.
22. On the other hand, it may be that par-
ents find it easier to convince their daughters
to participate in cultural activities and take
long-term lessons than to convince their sons.
Furtherresearch is necessary to determine the
roles of gender socializationversus opportuni-
ties in the social structure in relation to gen-
der and cultural activities.
23. Although McClelland (1990) opera-
tionalized habitus, she did not do so in the
context of Bourdieu's broader framework,
with the notions of cultural capital and field.
 APPENDIX

CorrelationMatrix of VariablesUsed in the Study

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
AllStudents(N = 11,795)
1. Grades 1.000
2. Ability 0.565 1.000
3. Occupationalexpectations 0.274 0.253 1.000
4. SES 0.331 0.425 0.219 1.000
5. Culturalcapital 0.257 0.290 0.153 0.403 1.000
6. Artclasses 0.088 0.131 0.024 0.178 0.437 1.000
7. Musicclasses 0.216 0.252 0.115 0.312 0.616 0.218 1.000
8. Dance classes 0.148 0.102 0.104 0.204 0.530 0.165 0.257 1.000
9. Libraryvisits 0.161 0.192 0.090 0.194 0.493 0.074 0.129 0.106 1.000
10. Going to concerts 0.132 0.137 0.078 0.210 0.627 0.112 0.243 0.167 0.190 1.000
11. Museumvisits 0.115 0.159 0.090 0.248 0.629 0.194 0.177 0.148 0.197 0.255
12. Sportsparticipation 0.162 0.103 0.085 0.142 0.050 0.009 0.035 0.014 0.041 0.050

MaleStudents(N = 5,803)
1. Grades 1.000
2. Ability 0.557 1.000
3. Occupationalexpectations 0.288 0.273 1.000
4. SES 0.346 0.413 0.275 1.000
5. Culturalcapital 0.195 0.258 0.121 0.375 1.000
6. Artclasses 0.074 0.117 0.009 0.166 0.418 1.000
7. Musicclasses 0.156 0.218 0.099 0.273 0.588 0.213 1.000
8. Dance classes 0.026 0.045 0.063 0.098 0.313 0.099 0.179 1.000
9. Libraryvisits 0.160 0.193 0.099 0.200 0.517 0.068 0.100 0.049 1.000
10. Going to concerts 0.087 0.112 0.048 0.219 0.661 0.112 0.234 0.097 0.172 1.000
11. Museumvisits 0.103 0.132 0.070 0.227 0.657 0.166 0.174 0.099 0.201 0.265
12. Sportsparticipation 0.198 0.094 0.091 0.132 0.033 -0.028 0.035 0.014 0.042 0.061
 APPENDIX (CONTINUED)

CorrelationMatrix of VariablesUsed in the Study

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

FemaleStudents(N = 5,992)

1. Grades 1.000
2. Ability 0.585 1.000
3. Occupationalexpectations 0.244 0.242 1.000
4. SES 0.327 0.438 0.178 1.000
5. Culturalcapital 0.287 0.347 0.140 0.463 1.000
6. Artclasses 0.096 0.147 0.030 0.190 0.462 1.000
7. Musicclasses 0.254 0.295 0.106 0.357 0.625 0.218 1.000
8. Danceclasses 0.176 0.167 0.074 0.311 0.593 0.206 0.269 1.000
9. Libraryvisits 0.150 0.195 0.065 0.193 0.473 0.077 0.145 0.115 1.000
10. Goingto concerts 0.157 0.176 0.078 0.216 0.584 0.108 0.228 0.154 0.195 1.000
11. Museumvisits 0.121 0.188 0.102 0.270 0.623 0.218 0.174 0.178 0.191 0.240
12. Sportsparticipation 0.156 0.109 0.107 0.146 0.114 0.043 0.083 0.085 0.058 0.076

Source:NationalEducationLongitudinalStudy,1988.
CulturalCapital,
Cultural Capital,Gender,
Gender,and
and School
SchoolSuccess
Success
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Susan A. Dumais, MA, is a doctoral candidate, Department of Sociology, Harvard University,

Cambridge,Massachusetts.Her mail fields of interest are social stratification,sociology of educa-
tion, and sociologyof culture.She is currentlycompletingher dissertationon the educationalattain-
ment of white working-classstudents.

The author is grateful for the comments of Shyon Baumann, GabriellaGonzalez, Devon Johnson,
MonicaMcDermott,Stephen Morgan,and the late Aage S0rensen. Thisresearchwas supportedby
a grant from the AmericanEducationalResearchAssociation, which receives funds for its AERA
Grants Programfrom the National Center of EducationStatistics and the Office of Educational
Researchand Improvements(U.S. Departmentof Education),and the National ScienceFoundation
underNSFGrantRED-9452861. Theopinionsexpressedhere reflectthose of the author and do not
necessarilyreflect those of the granting agencies. Direct all correspondenceto Susan A. Dumais,
Department of Sociology, Harvard University,473 WilliamJames Hall, 33 KirklandStreet,
Cambridge,MA02138; e-mail: dumais@wjh.harvard.edu.