Gender Differences in What Is Desired in the Sexual Relationship

It has been proposed that women possess a "person centered" orientation to sexuality- the goal of sex is to express affection to another person in a committed relations. Conversely, men possess a "body centered" orientation toward sex-the goal of sex is physical gratification. These different orientations toward sex in relatidnships should lead men and women to have different desires in the sexual relationship. We hypothesized that women will desire more activities in sex that demonstrate love and intimacy, while men will desire more activities that focus on arousal aspects of the sexual activity itself (more partner initiative; more variety). Two samples were used to test the hypotheses: 189 undergraduate students and 53 newly married couples. Men and women were asked how much they desired their partner to do less or more of a variety of activities during sex. The results indicated that there were gender differences found in what was desired from the sexual relationship that were consistent with our predictions. These differences may be explained by differential socialization and/or different evolutionary pressures.     

Perceptions of Emotional Closeness and Commitment Among African American Couples: Implications for Promoting Relationship Stability

This study investigated how married and cohabiting African Americans define and experience emotional closeness and commitment because these processes have been shown to be directly linked to relationship stability. Thirty married and 30 cohabiting African American couples participated. Couples were between the ages of 21 and 45 years and had been in their relationship between 3 and 15 years. Interviews were conducted with the couples in their homes and were aimed at yielding a co-construction of couples’ views of these constructs. Specifically, this co-construction involved an examination of the ways men and women in married and cohabiting relationships define and experience emotional closeness and commitment. Special attention was devoted to examining the themes elicited from these interviews and illuminate the specific ways in which married and cohabiting African American couples consider emotional closeness and commitment. In general, few differences were apparent in their perceptions of emotional closeness. However, married couples were more likely to report that commitment played a large role in their decision to be together. Conversely, cohabiting couples expressed different views of commitment, often stating that commitment played a minimal role in their relationship or that they experienced commitment in ways that were not linked to the legal affirmation of their relationship. Implications for future research and practice include the importance of pinpointing the individual and cultural deterrents that affect the relationship stability of low income African American couples.     

Gender Differences in Marital Satisfaction: A Meta‐analysis

The purpose of the present meta‐analysis was to empirically test the widely held assumption that women experience lower marital satisfaction than men. A total of 226 independent samples with a combined sum of 101,110 participants were included in the meta‐analysis. Overall results indicated statistically significant yet very small gender differences in marital satisfaction between wives and husbands, with wives slightly less satisfied than husbands; moderator analyses, however, indicated that this difference was due to the inclusion of clinical samples, with wives in marital therapy 51% less likely to be satisfied with their marital relationship than their husbands. The effect size for nonclinical community‐based samples indicated no significant gender differences among couples in the general population. Additional moderator analyses indicated that there were also no gender differences when the levels of marital satisfaction of husbands and wives in the same relationship (i.e., dyadic data) were compared.     

Patterns of matching and initiation: Touch behavior and touch avoidance across romantic relationship stages

This study explores the similarity of touch behavior and touch attitudes among dating and married couples. Touch behavior showed a strong matching effect for seriously dating and married couples. Z-tests revealed that correlations between relational partners were significantly stronger for marrieds than for serious or casual daters. Results for attitudes concerning touch showed a statistically significant but weak relationship between dyadic partners though the correlation strengthened in closer relationships. As was the case in previous studies, results showed that women reported less positive attitudes toward opposite-sex touch than men. A linear contrast in proportions demonstrated that men initiated touch significantly more in casual romantic relationships, but women initiated touch more in married relationships. Together, these data suggest that patterns of matching may vary as a function of relationship stage, while patterns of touch initiation may vary as a function of both relationship stage and sex.She will be at Pennsylvania State University in the Fall.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1991 meeting of the Western States Communication Association, Phoenix, AZ. The authors thank Johanna Bailey, Brigitte Bellocq, Trish Brehault, Shaun Cantor, Ronan Collver, Vico Guerrero, Lisa Kaplan, Erika Nelson, and Dan Riley for assistance in data collection and entry.     

Gender Gaps in Public Opinion about Lesbians and Gay Men

Using data from a 1999 national RDD survey (N = 1,335), thisarticle examines gender gaps in heterosexuals' attitudes towardlesbians, gay men, and a variety of topics related to homosexuality.Attitudes toward lesbians differed from attitudes toward gaymen in several areas, and significant differences were observedbetween male and female heterosexual respondents. Survey participantsgenerally were more likely to regard gay men as mentally ill,supported adoption rights for lesbians more than for gay men,and had more negative personal reactions to gay men than tolesbians. Overall, heterosexual women were more supportive thanmen of employment protection and adoption rights for gay people,more willing to extend employee benefits to same-sex couples,and less likely to hold stereotypical beliefs about gay people.Heterosexual men's negative reactions to gay men were at theroot of these gender differences. Of all respondent-by-targetcombinations, heterosexual men were the least supportive ofrecognition of same-sex relationships and adoption rights forgay men, most likely to believe that gay men are mentally illand molest children, and most negative in their affective reactionsto gay men. Heterosexual men's response patterns were affectedby item order, suggesting possible gender differences in thecognitive organization of attitudes toward gay men and lesbians.The findings demonstrate the importance of differentiating lesbiansfrom gay men as attitude targets in survey research.     

Is Your Spouse More Likely to Divorce You if You Are the Older Partner?

The authors assessed how the relative age of spouses affects whether men or women initiate a divorce, using data from the National Survey of Families and Households. Ex‐spouses' reports of who left generally agreed, but not always, so the analysis used a latent class model embedded in an event‐history model with competing risks that the woman leaves the man or the man leaves the woman. Support was not found for the hypothesis that age heterogamy itself increases the odds of divorce: Even large age differences did not make men more likely to leave younger wives, and women's exits were as likely when the marriage is homogamous as when she was older. The main conclusion is that both men and women are more likely to leave if their spouse is older than they are. The effects were stronger for men, but the gender difference in effect size was not statistically significant.     

Average cost per person victimized by an intimate partner of the opposite gender: a comparison of men and women

Differences in prevalence, injury, and utilization of services between female and male victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) have been noted. However, there are no studies indicating approximate costs of men's IPV victimization. This study explored gender differences in service utilization for physical IPV injuries and average cost per person victimized by an intimate partner of the opposite gender. Significantly more women than men reported physical IPV victimization and related injuries. A greater proportion of women than men reported seeking mental health services and reported more visits on average in response to physical IPV victimization. Women were more likely than men to report using emergency department, inpatient hospital, and physician services, and were more likely than men to take time off from work and from childcare or household duties because of their injuries. The total average per person cost for women experiencing at least one physical IPV victimization was more than twice the average per person cost for men.     

Nonmarital cohabitation

On the basis of a national random sample survey of 2143 men and women, it is estimated that 890,000 couples were living together unmarried in the United States as of January 1976. A comparison of cohabiting and married respondents indicated that cohabitors are younger, less religious, and more likely to be divorced than their married counterparts. Few differences were found between marrieds and cohabitors with regard to decision-making power, division of labor, openness of communication, and satisfaction with the relationship. However, the duration of the cohabiting relationship was found to be significantly shorter than that of marital relationships.     

Family Migration and Subsequent Employment: The Effect of Gender Ideology

A substantial body of evidence shows gender asymmetry in family migration, with women more likely to leave employment following migration than men. Gender ideologies, although yet not tested directly, have been proposed as one determinant for these asymmetries. Analyzing longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (1991–2008) on 3,333 dual‐earner couples with dyadic multilevel regression models, the author examined whether the association of family migration with subsequent employment is moderated by the gender ideologies of both partners. The existing literature is enriched by illustrating that women's gender ideologies do not moderate the association, but women with egalitarian partners are less likely to leave employment after family migration than those with traditional partners. No significant effects for men were found. Even after controlling for both partners' gender ideologies and relevant control variables, a substantial gender difference in the risk of leaving employment after family migration remains, meriting further research.     

A review of research on women's use of violence with male intimate partners

This article provides a review of research literature on women who use violence with intimate partners. The central purpose is to inform service providers in the military and civilian communities who work with domestically violent women. The major points of this review are as follows: (a) women's violence usually occurs in the context of violence against them by their male partners; (b) in general, women and men perpetrate equivalent levels of physical and psychological aggression, but evidence suggests that men perpetrate sexual abuse, coercive control, and stalking more frequently than women and that women also are much more frequently injured during domestic violence incidents; (c) women and men are equally likely to initiate physical violence in relationships involving less serious "situational couple violence," and in relationships in which serious and very violent "intimate terrorism" occurs, men are much more likely to be perpetrators and women victims; (d) women's physical violence is more likely than men's violence to be motivated by self-defense and fear, whereas men's physical violence is more likely than women's to be driven by control motives; (e) studies of couples in mutually violent relationships find more negative effects for women than for men; and (f) because of the many differences in behaviors and motivations between women's and men's violence, interventions based on male models of partner violence are likely not effective for many women.     

Gender,Religiosity, Spirituality,and Attitudes toward Homosexuality

This article investigates the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, gender, and attitudes toward homosexuality. The article augments the existing literature by examining the effects of religious affiliation, religiosity, and spirituality on attitudes toward homosexuality separately for men and women using the 2008 and 2010 General Social Surveys. Results indicate significant gender differences in attitudes toward homosexuality for two variables. Southern residence decreases tolerance among men, but not women. Also, men who self-identify as spiritual, but not religious, are more likely to report that homosexuality is not morally wrong than their more religious counterparts; however, a similar finding was not evident among the women who self-identified as spiritual.     

Intimate partner homicide methods in heterosexual, gay, and lesbian relationships

Previous research indicates that the killing method used in homicides may reflect the motivation of the offender and qualities of the victim-offender relationship. The effect of gender and sexual orientation of intimate partner homicide offenders (N = 51,007) was examined with respect to the brutality of killing methods. Guided by previous research and theory, it was hypothesized that homicide brutality will vary with the offender's sexual orientation and gender, such that the percentage of killings coded as brutal will be higher for (a) gay and lesbian relative to heterosexual relations, (b) men relative to women, (c) gay relative to heterosexual men, and (d) lesbian relative to heterosexual women. The rates of intimate partner homicide were also hypothesized to vary with the gender of the partners, such that (a) homicide rates will be higher in gay relative to heterosexual and lesbian couples and (b) homicide rates will be lowest in lesbian couples. The results support all but one prediction derived from the two hypotheses. We predicted that men would kill their partners more brutally than would women, but the results indicate that the opposite is true.     

More Than Just Sex

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to identify behaviors in addition to those of an explicitly sexual or romantic nature that men and women define as unfaithful acts in the context of committed dating relationships. We also sought to identify possible gender differences in the proportions of men and women who have engaged in these unfaithful behaviors while in dating relationships. We examined 219 college men's and women's reported involvement in sexual behaviors, romantic attachments, sexual and nonsexual fantasies, sexual attraction, romantic attraction, flirting, and social participation in dyads and groups with someone other than their current or past dating partner. A sizable proportion of both men and women reported engaging in one or more of the behaviors at some point in their dating history. Proportionately more men than women indicated having engaged in sexual fantasies of various types about someone other than their primary partner and reported “hitting on” someone else while in a dating relationship. No other gender differences emerged. A unique aspect of this study is that we asked young men and women to determine what kinds of behaviors they considered to be unfaithful rather than only examining sexual and emotional behaviors as has been the case in past research. Further, the few significant gender differences we found indicates that the convergence of men's and women's attitudes about sexuality may now be show in their behavior.     

Gender and the Seriousness of Assaults on Intimate Partners and Other Victims

We examine the ways in which assaults committed by male intimate partners are more serious than assaults committed by female partners and whether these differences reflect gender differences in offending and victimization generally. Analyses of the National Violence Against Women and Men Survey (N =6,480) show that, in general, gender effects do not depend on the victim's relationship to the offender. Regardless of their relationship (a) men cause more injuries; (b) women suffer more injuries although their injuries tend to be less severe; (c) victims are more fearful of male offenders but only if the offenders are unarmed; and (d) men are particularly likely to precipitate assaults by other men, not their female partners. Violent husbands do assault with particularly high frequency but so do women who assault family members.     

Conflict and Compatibility? Developmental Idealism and Gendered Differences in Marital Choice

Developmental idealism (DI) theory suggests that individuals who endorse DI schemas about marriage are more likely to choose their own spouses and do so for love. Such DI schemas conflict with South Asian gender schemas about marriage for women, but not for men. In turn, such conflict and compatibility may create gender differences in incorporating DI into expectations and experiences of marital choice and love in South Asia. Connections between endorsing DI as an abstract model of the world and using DI as a concrete guide for marriage may also differ by gender. Using survey data from Nepal, the author finds that men are more likely than women to expect to choose their own spouse and do so for love. Their parents' expectations show the same gender differences. Men are also more likely to choose their own spouses in practice. Connections between abstract and concrete DI are not stronger among men though.     

The Role of Marital Status and Age on Men’s and Women’s Reactions to Touch from a Relational Partner

Prior research has consistently documented differences between men’s and women’s reactions to being touched by other people. One of the more interesting findings in this literature is the apparent role of marital status in dramatically altering these sex differences in reactions to intimate touch. Unmarried men tend to respond more favorably to intimate touch than unmarried women do, but this difference is reversed among married people. However, research that documented this effect has potentially confounded marital status with age. Participants in this investigation were 305 adults, ranging in age from 18–69. They completed an extensive survey of their reactions to touch to various body regions from a significant other. Results indicated that men had uniformly more positive reactions to intimate touch than women did. For non-intimate touch, the sexes were more comparable in their reactions. This investigation once again documented a disordinal sex by marital status interaction. Unmarried men had generally more positive reactions to touch than unmarried women did and this pattern was reversed among married participants. When statistically controlling for participants’ age, these interactions were still evident.     

Gender ideology, division of housework, and the geographic mobility of families

The paper studies the relevance of gender ideology for the geographic mobility of families using data from the German Socio-economic Panel. The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, it is shown that single men and women—who are in some sense “unconstrained” optimizers—reveal identical mobility patterns. There are no fundamental gender differences in the inter-regional mobility of German singles. Second, I focus on dual-earner households and split this group into “traditional” and “egalitarian” couples using information on their factual division of housework rather than their reported gender ideology. Separate migration analyses for both groups reveal important differences indicating the significance of gender ideology in families’ migration behavior: job-related characteristics of men statistically dominate those of women in traditional couples, whereas in egalitarian couples, male and female characteristics have the same effect on family migration behavior, i.e. there is no gender bias. Failure to account for the heterogeneity in gendered family roles across families thus misses an important explanatory factor in migration research.      

Unwanted sexual contact on campus: a comparison of women's and men's experiences

While sexual victimization continues to be a problem on college campuses, recent attention has been drawn to understanding gender differences in victimization rates and consequences. To date, these studies remain relatively few in number. The current study surveyed 651 male and female undergraduate students about unwanted sexual experiences during 1 academic year. Comparison of men and women revealed expected differences in incidence rates, with women reporting higher rates of unwanted contact. Within the subsample of reported victims, however, there was gender similarity in terms of the context of unwanted sexual experiences. Analyses also revealed the negative consequences of these experiences for both men and women and low rates of disclosure regardless of gender. Across the full sample of students surveyed, there were interesting gender differences in knowledge of campus support services, with women more likely to have attended a prevention program and to have indicated greater knowledge of rape crisis services.     

Spousal resources and relationship quality in eight European countries

ABSTRACT

We relate relationship satisfaction and thoughts about leaving a romantic relationship to a couple’s relative and absolute resources and check for context-dependency of those associations. Our theoretical point of departure is that the more resources women have compared to their spouses, the higher their intra-household bargaining power to negotiate themselves out of unpleasant tasks, particularly in gender-egalitarian and very income equal and unequal societies. In traditional societies (which score low on the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM)), the inflexible role of men within the household presumably prevents women from bargaining a better position, which in turn negatively affects relationship quality. Income equality (low GINI coefficient) may be a prerequisite for women’s bargaining position, where more inequality (mid-GINI) may be detrimental for it. Nevertheless, extreme income inequality (high GINI) may again be favorable for women’s relationship power. Using country fixed effects models on data from the Generations and Gender Surveys (GGS), we compare men and women who are in a couple (formed after 1995) for eight European countries. We find that absolute resources matter more than relative resources, at least for relationship satisfaction: Higher educated couples are more satisfied with their relationships, which could suggest lower stress levels in those couples (in more traditional contexts). Second, we observe GINI context-dependency of the association between relative education and relationship satisfaction for women and relative education and exit thoughts for men, although opposite to what we expected. Perhaps reference group theory or gender display theory can explain these unexpected results. Finally, we find that women have more break-up plans in societies with a lower score on GEM. This last result is consistent with the notion that bargaining only works in egalitarian contexts.