JANET SHIBLEY HYDE AND MARY BETH OLIVER
Feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon wrote, “Sexuality is to feminism what work is to marxism: that which is most one’s own, yet most taken away” (1982, p. 1). Feminists have long identified sexuality as a key issue for women. For example, many birth control advocates in the early 1900s, such as Margaret Sanger and Ezara Heywood, argued that women’s control of their reproductive functions was instrumental to their economic and intellectual freedom (Gordon, 1977). The Declaration of Sentiments, delivered at Seneca Falls in 1848, denounced, among other things, the sexual double standard (Donovan, 1985). Implicit in these feminist analyses is a belief that there are gender differences in patterns of sexuality, although not all or even most of these gender differences are attributed to biological factors.
In this chapter we first review a number of theories that either directly address the issue of gender differences in sexuality or postulate a set of processes that readily lend themselves to predictions regarding gender differences in sexuality. Specifically, we review the perspectives of the neoanalytic theorist Chodorow, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, social learning theory, social role theory and script theory, and feminist theory.
Next, we summarize the results of a major meta-analysis that we conducted on gender differences in sexual attitudes and behaviors. Following that, we consider several behaviors that were not part of our meta-analysis, including mate selection, fantasy, and sexual jealousy. Finally, we summarize the main conclusions that we think can be drawn from research on gender differences in sexuality.