ABSTRACT
In their ethnographic study of female college students’ academic achievements, Educated in Romance, Dorothy C. Holland and Margaret A. Eisenhart (1990) demonstrated that for women the game of attracting a man-the cult of romance-overrode and undermined academic achievement as well as same-sex social bonds. They argue that apart from the establishment of a heterosexual relationship, the peer culture provided limited opportunities for women to earn prestige but gave male students multiple possibilities, including academic achievement, to enhance their status. Though this work provides an insightful analysis of the power of peer culture over the academic performance of women in a manner that also reinforces male privilege, the authors were unable to include male students in their study, leaving open questions about the effects of this peer culture on the performance of men. Furthermore, the salience of non-romantic same-sex and opposite-sex relationships to the academic achievement of both male and female students remains unexplored.
