Single and Double Sexual Standards in Finland, Estonia, and St
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Single and Double Sexual Standards in Finland, Estonia, and St. Petersburg Elina Haavio-Mannila The University of Helsinki, Finland Osmo Kontula The Family Federation of Finland The sexual revolution and fight for gender equality began in the West during the 1960s but did not reach the Soviet Union until the late 1980s. Using survey data from nationally representative samples from Finland in 1971, 1992, and 1999 and from two former Soviet areas, Estonia in 2000 and St. Petersburg in 1996, we investigated the following: (a) differences across decades and countries in acceptance of the sexual double standard (SDS) in attitudes toward marital infidelity and women's initiating sex; and (b) the relationship between the SDS and sexual satisfaction. Results show that Finland in the 1990s was more egalitarian than Finland in 1971, St. Petersburg in 1996, or Estonia in 2000. Egalitarian sexual attitudes were positively related to sexual satisfaction. SEXUAL STANDARDS similar men and women are in sexual response and func- tioning (Irvine, 1990). Centuries of written history of Western societies document The advent of more individualistic values and more that women and men have been treated differently in sex- equal standards for men and women is related to socioeco- ual matters (Tannahill, 1981). Usually, women but not men nomic developments. Individualism and relaxation of the have been pressured to remain virgins until marriage and requirement of virginity in brides correlate with high to abstain from sexual activities after divorce or the deaths Gross National Product (GNP; Hofstede, 1998). Growing of their spouses. This inequality in sexual standards for affluence provides women with more educational opportu- men and women is referred to as a sexual double standard. nities. Girls start circulating more freely, and they have A sexual double standard is a dual set of moral standards more opportunities to meet boys. Increasing affluence also for males and females, usually with stricter standards gives people more living space and privacy. Medical care applied to females, especially for premarital virginity and and information improve, including information on con- for what is considered acceptable sexual behavior traception. Young people get more opportunities for sexu- (Francoeur, Perper, Scherzer, Sellmer, & Cornog, 1991). al exploration, and sexual norms adapt to this situation. Williams (1987) suggested that, historically, these dif- ferent sexual standards originated from women's value to THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION IN THE WEST men as property and objects of exchange. To preserve their value, it was viewed as essential that girls and women pre- Increasing affluence, along with secularization and urban- serve their virginity before marriage. Monitoring of vir- ization in industrialized Western countries in the 1960s, ginity and chastity served to protect young women from gave rise to a sexual revolution. This revolution drew unwanted pregnancies, to ensure that they married men attention to the sexual activity and satisfaction of women, from their own social class or clan, and to preserve family lead to increased sexual knowledge, and introduced mod- honor (Siann, 1994). ern sexual values. These included the right of women to In the 19th century the sexual differences between obtain pleasure from sex (Barbach, 1975). women and men became a legitimate subject of scientific In welfare states such as Finland, where the government inquiry. This perspective is typified by researchers like provides an array of services for its population and inequal- Havelock Ellis, who considered female sexuality to be ity of income is low by international comparison, a coun- weaker, less fulfilling, and more passive than male sexu- try's growing GNP can provide benefits for the whole pop- ality. In contrast, modern sexology since the Kinsey era ulation. Finland's basic institutions have supported sex edu- has stressed the ideology of gender similarity. Scientists, cation in the schools, gender equality in laws and norms, most notably Masters and Johnson, have emphasized how discussions of sexual issues in the media, highly trained family planning services, and easy access to sexual health services. In such a society, many barriers to sexual satisfac- The data collection for this study was financed by the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, the Academy of Finland, and privately by Elina tion are eliminated. Kontula and Kosonen (1994, 1996) sug- Haavio-Mannila (in Estonia). No commercial or interest groups provided finan- gested that the lively discussion of sexuality and gender cial support for the studies. issues in the Finnish media since the 1960s contributed to Address correspondence to Elina Haavio-Mannila, Department of Sociology, University of Helsinki, Unioninkatu 35, P.O. Box 18, Fin-00014 Helsinki, the increase in women's sexual satisfaction in the 1970s and Finland; e-mail: [email protected]. to the increasingly similar sexual expectations of men and The Journal of Sex Research Volume 40, Number 1, February 2003: pp. 36-49 36 Haavio-Mannila and Kontula 37 women in Finland as reported in sex surveys (Kontula & ninity and masculinity and to improve interactions Haavio-Mannila, 1995). between men and women. Demographers and pedagogues One achievement of the sexual revolution was the insti- devised pronatalist "sex role socialization" classes. tutionalization of public sex education and information. In Women and men were instructed that being a cultured, many countries in northern Europe, particularly Sweden, moral person required them to realize the dictates of their gender-equality-oriented sex education had already started gendered nature. Sexual moral education texts launched in the 1950s, earlier than in the United States and Canada vivid attacks on emancipated (used pejoratively to mean (Bergström-Walan, 1965; Linn6r & Litell, 1967). In the autonomous, ambitious, and assertive) women. At the mid-1970s, when the U.S. was experiencing the sexual same time that the women's movement in Western Europe revolution, a Hood of "how-to" books accompanied the and North America seized upon images of sexual equality, rather sudden lifting of the veil of human sexuality (Phelps and egalitarian relations between men and women became & Austin, 1988, p. 142). Barbach (1975) advanced the popular among university-educated groups, Soviet experts concept of personal liberation for women as sexual human were attempting to encourage traditional interactions beings. Menand (1997, p. 27) wrote, "The pop ideology of between the sexes by modifying girls' and women's the sexual liberation was that . women enjoyed sex as behavior (Rivkin-Fish, 1999, p. 804). much as men, and in the same way as men were imagined Before the 1990s, the Soviet Union had no formal fam- to enjoy it — that is, actively, and without guilt." ily or sex education. Abortion was almost the only avail- Sexual relations between the sexes were expected to able method to prevent pregnancy (Kon & Riordan, 1993). reflect equal respect and concern for the differing sexual The risk of pregnancy was so great that Russian women needs of men and women (Hearn & Morgan, 1990). Some could not enjoy the same degree of sexual freedom as survey research in the U.S. has indicated a decrease in, if women in many Western countries did. At the end of the not disappearance of, the traditional sexual double stan- 1980s, Gorbachev's policy of glasnost led to the liberal- dard (Sprecher & McKinney, 1993). However, ization of the printed word, and such topics as abortion, Muehlenhard and Quackenbush (1988), using their Sexual birth clinics, contraceptives, and young people's sexuality Double Standard Scale, found that female college students entered into public debate (Kon 1995, p. 267). still held this standard to a certain degree, and they thought that their male sexual partners held it to an even greater SEX RESEARCH IN THE BALTIC REGION degree. A conditional double standard was found to oper- The 1990s saw a growing interest in both gender studies ate at least under certain circumstances, such as in casual and sexual science in cross-cultural comparisons. National relationships (Sprecher & McKinney, 1993). sex surveys were conducted in many Western countries (Gronow, Haavio-Mannila, Kivinen, Lonkila, & Rotkirch, THE DEMOGRAPHIC CRISIS IN THE SOVIET UNION 1997; Haavio-Mannila & Kontula, 2001; Haavio-Mannila The Soviet Union was geographically close to this Western & Purhonen, 2001; Hubert, Bajos, & Sandfort, 1998; sexual reform, but because of much slower economic Kontula & Haavio-Mannila, 1995; Laumann, Gagnon, development and public restrictions on the distribution of Michael, & Michaels, 1994; Lewin, Fugl-Meyer, Helmius, new sexual knowledge, Russian women missed their Lalos, & Månsson, 1998; Spira, Bajos, & the ACSF Group, chance to join the progress toward gender equalization in 1994; Wellings, Field, Wadsforth, & Johnson, 1994). The sexual matters. Compared with the West, in Soviet coun- specific aim of these surveys was not to study gender tries there was not much evidence of a sexual revolution at equality or sexual double standards as such; however, sur- the end of the 1960s or even in the 1970s. Indeed, sexual vey results indicated the presence of different sexual stan- patterns in Soviet countries have only gradually shifted in dards for men and women in these societies. the Western direction (Kon, 1995; Liljeström, 1995; This new wave of national sex surveys gave us a chance Rotkirch, 2000). to study whether sexual double standards still exist and The "demographic crisis" detected in the early 1970s whether there are differences in sexual standards between in the European regions of the USSR (low fertility and northern Europe and some adjacent areas of the former high divorce rates) was interpreted by the scientists and Soviet Union. In this paper, we analyze the following: (a) their bureaucratic colleagues to reflect a breakdown in the existence of sexual single and double standards in mar- family values, attributed largely to women's participation ital fidelity and in initiating sexual activity in Finland, in the labor force. Early socialist ideals concerning the Estonia, and St.