The Sexual Double Standard and Adolescent Peer Acceptance

Abstract

The belief that women and men are held to different standards of sexual conduct is pervasive in contemporary American society. According to the sexual double standard, boys and men are rewarded and praised for heterosexual sexual contacts, whereas girls and women are derogated and stigmatized for similar behaviors. Although widely held by the general public, research findings on the sexual double standard remain equivocal, with qualitative studies and early attitudinal surveys generally finding evidence of the double standard and more recent experimental vignette designs often failing to find similar results. In this study, we extend prior research by directly measuring the social status of sexually permissive youth. We use data collected from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to relate adolescents’ self-reported numbers of sexual partners to a network measure of peer acceptance. Results suggest that the association between lifetime sexual partnerships and peer status varies significantly by gender, such that greater numbers of sexual partners are positively correlated with boys’ peer acceptance, but negatively correlated with girls’ peer acceptance. Moreover, the relationship between boys’ sexual behaviors and peer acceptance is moderated by socioeconomic origins; sexually permissive boys from disadvantaged backgrounds are predicted to have more friendships than permissive boys from more advantaged backgrounds. Our results thus support the existence of an adolescent sexual double standard and suggest that sexual norms vary by both gender and socioeconomic origins.

Cultural meanings and the aggregation of actions: the case of sex and schooling in Malawi

“…This study suggests a different approach: policies designed to reduce the stigma associated with sexual activity might improve educational outcomes, particularly for girls. In the US, abstinence-based sexual education programs promote a moralistic view of sexuality that emphasizes female restraint (Fine and McClelland 2006;Luker 2006), and girls more frequently experience stigma and shaming for engaging in sex than do boys (Crawford and Popp 2003;Kreager and Staff 2009). In Malawi, adolescents face myriad risks as they have sex and fall in love, but sexual relationships are also an important developmental milestone, particularly in a context of early and nearly universal marriage (Frye and Trinitapoli 2015).…”

Construcción de un índice de riesgo para la infección por el VIH y su relación con la doble moral y el poder diádico en adolescentes

“…En los resultados no se encuentra que la doble moral correlacione con el índice de riesgo de infección del VIH. Este dato es similar a los obtenidos en diversas investigaciones (Bermúdez, Castro, Gude et al, 2010;Kreager y Staff, 2009 Por otra parte, se encuentra que el grupo de varones muestra una mayor adhesión a la doble moral y, en función de ésta, tratarían de mantener relaciones sexuales desprotegidas. Se puede concluir que, en mujeres, la única variable, de las analizadas en este estudio, que predice un mayor riesgo de infección por VIH, es el poder en la relación de pareja, tal y como encuentran otros autores (Fernández-Esquer et al, 2004;Kreager y Staff, 2009;Pulerwitz y Barker, 2008).…”

“…Sin embargo, el poder en la relación no se evalúa. Otras investigaciones han llegado a resultados similares, al relacionar una doble moral elevada con mayor número de parejas sexuales (Kreager y Staff, 2009;Zangao y Sim-Sim, 2011).…”

Using Participatory Research to Work With Women from Ethnic Minorities at Risk for HIV Living In Industrialized Countries

“…Interventions targeting these women should therefore aim to empower them in their relationships [17][18][19][20]. As participatory approaches (PA) are a way to increase empowerment the sexual double standard, men are praised for their sexual activity while women are denigrated for similar behaviors [33,34]. These norms discourage women from talking about sexuality [35][36][37] and this ignorance tends to give men greater control over sexual matters, creating a socially sanctioned inequality between sexual partners [15].…”