From hooking up to staying in? Women negotiating appropriate sexuality in nightlife with age

Abstract

While much research has explored contemporary constructions of young women’s sexuality, few studies have been sensitive to how age influences women’s sexuality in the context of mainstream nightlife. Drawing on sexual scripting theory, I investigate how 19 Norwegian women (ages 27–34 years) draw on and negotiate cultural scripts when making sense of their nightlife experiences with age. I found that nightlife was an increasingly difficult space to occupy, and that participating could cause tension with the women’s understandings of themselves, their behaviours and their desires in nightlife. While age-related scripts allowed the participants to criticise gender inequality in sexual interaction in nightlife, they simultaneously obscured how gender inequality in nightlife persisted in new forms with age.