Working "the Code": On Girls, Gender, and Inner City Violence.

In this paper, I use data collected during three years of ethnographic research to demonstrate that young women who live in distressed inner-city neighborhoods are not isolated by virtue of their gender from much of the violence experienced by their male counterparts. Over time, both young women and men in these settings come to realize how reputation, respect, and retaliation-the fundamental elements of "the code of the street" (Anderson 1999)-organize their social world. At times, how young people consider and respond to these threats-how they work the code-is similar across gender. I conclude this paper by describing how gender structures teen-aged girls' and boys' use of physical aggression and violence in distinct ways. This in-depth examination of young people's use of physical aggression and violence reveals that "survival" is a gendered project. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]