Prevalence of adherence to sexual double standard in Spanish society

What is it about?

The concept of sexual double standard is used to refer to the assessment, positive or negative, that people make of men and women when they engage in certain sexual behavior. Research in psychology has shown that women and men are differently evaluated when they engage in the same sexual behavior. For example, we use the term traditional sexual double standard to refer to the fact that people positively assess men more than women for engaging in sexual behaviors such as taking the initiative in relationships, having sex in casual encounters, or engaging in frequent sexual activity. When many people agree on how to assess men and women for their sexual behavior, then that evaluation becomes a social norm. Recent years have shown that there are different norms for assessing men and women when they engage in sexual. Traditionally, most people supported a sexual double standard that favors men. That is, most people agreed in evaluating men more positively than women when they freely expressed their sexuality or are not sexually demure. It has been shown, for example, that when a person supports a sexual double standard that favors men, behaviors related to aggression, sexual coercion of men towards women, and sexual victimization of women can increase. In recent decades, in modern societies, women are increasingly claiming their right to express and live their sexuality freely. For this reason, the number of people who support a sexual double standard that favors women is increasing; in this case, sectors of the population coincide in valuing women more positively than men when they freely and unreservedly express their sexuality. In democratic and developed societies, a single criterion, which is a sexual equal standard, for assessing men and women when they express their sexuality is desirable. Knowing the percentage of the population that supports one sexual standard or sexual double standard, i.e. egalitarian or man-favorable and woman-favorable, is important not only to promote education policies that favor gender equality in the area of sexuality but also to develop intervention programs that help people to be more egalitarian in their heterosexual relationships Given the absence of research of this type, this study examined how the percentage of support for the various forms of sexual double standards (man-favorable, woman-favorable, and egalitarian) is distributed in a sample of 2,002 heterosexual Spanish. The main results showed that the overall sample supports the sexual equal standard. However, differences were found between men and women, according to the age of the person. While most men support a sexual double standard than favors men, among women there is a higher prevalence of egalitarian and woman-favorable sexual norms. The differences between the age groups show that most men which are between 26 and 55 years old support the sexual double standard that favors men, while young men, which are between 18 and 25 years old, and over 55-year-olds support the sexual equal standard. For women, in all age groups, the egalitarian norm is most prevalent.

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Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

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