School Bullying as Manifested by Interplay of Culture and Gender among Adolescents

School bullying is not a new phenomenon under study. Consistent empirical evidence suggests that more boys than girls engage in school bullying, with boys displaying the by and large accepted view of bullying behaviours, while girls seem to engage in only subtle or indirect forms of bullying, if at all. Each culture has its own norms regarding aggression display, so can these gender differences in school bullying be a result of cultural prescriptions? In a country like India, where there are clear cut differences in the accepted ways of behaving for boys and girls, the very idea of girls engaging in something that involves display of aggression seems odd. The present paper explores the lived experiences of 13 adolescent boys and girls engaged in school bullying (either as perpetrators or victims) to shed light on the culture prescribed manifestation. The participants were selected using peer nominations from 877 students from classes 6-8 of a public school in Delhi. Through the analysis of their interviews, it was found that both boys and girls experience aggression in a similar manner, differing only in manifestation. While boys are allowed to freely express that aggression, girls are explicitly stopped from doing so. Similar differences were found with respect to victimization. These results are significant for developing suitable interventions to combat school bullying.

Keywords: School Bullying, Social Constructionism, Gender Role Socialization, Adolescence