Women's Sexual Agency Research Articles

Women's Experiences of Sexual Agency Under Constrained Choice: A Systematic Review

In Western societies, women are encouraged to present themselves in sexualized ways and are expected to experience this as a form of sexual agency. However, research on women's sexual agency is new and still developing, leading to inconsistent definitions and understandings. In addition, women's experiences of and resistance to violations of their sexual boundaries are frequently overlooked. The current systematic review answers research questions on how sexual agency has been conceptualized, how it has been studied in relation to sexual violence, and how women's social positionality influences sexual agency. A systematic strategy was used to search 10 health and social science databases and analyze 95 full-text articles. A feminist social constructionist framework guided this mixed-methods synthesis and provided a framework for addressing the research questions. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how society and researchers understand women's sexual agency and how intersectionality is largely ignored. Findings also identify an urgent need for future research to consider the relations between violence against women and women's perceptions of (or lack of) sexual agency. Future policymakers, researchers, and educators should move away from a one-size-fits-all approach in their work and instead, consider the diverse impact of societal expectations on women. By doing so, we can develop policies and programming that are specifically tailored to address the unique needs and challenges faced by women in society.

Promiscuous Technologies: Shifting Notions of Gender and Sexuality in Nigeria’s Digital Public Sphere

This paper critically examines the emergence of sexual technologies in Nigeria's digital public sphere. In particular, it explores how the use of sexual technologies like vibrators and dildos in public spaces is viewed as transgressive, and how cultural, social, and religious factors shape Nigerians' perceptions. The paper adopts the concept of transgressive publics to describe how social media enables minoritized groups to challenge dominant norms around sexuality. Two recent cases are analyzed – one involving a Nollywood actress publicly distributing dildos at an event, and another with a blogger recording Nigerian women using vibrators. To examine public discourse around these events, social media comments on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were collected and analyzed thematically. Key findings show sexual technologies are condemned as immoral, demonic, disrespectful to cultural values, and a threat to masculinity. Criticism relies heavily on moral and religious beliefs that cast non-normative sexual expressions as sinful. Reactions also expose gender anxieties related to female autonomy and shifting power relations. However, some pragmatic comments defend women's actions given Nigeria's difficult economic climate. While stigmatized, the public emergence of sexual technologies constitutes a transgressive public for asserting women's sexual agency and pushing boundaries. The study demonstrates how cultural narratives regulating sexuality are negotiated through technology, highlighting tensions between tradition and modernity.

Our Fair Share of Risk-Taking and Bad Sex: A Dialogic Inquiry into Young Women's Sexual Agency

Our Fair Share of Risk-Taking and Bad Sex: A Dialogic Inquiry into Young Women's Sexual Agency

Claiming the Erotic and Intimate Self: The Sexual Agency of Adolescent Girls in Trinidad and Tobago

This study explores the sexual agency of adolescent girls in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). Using Black, Caribbean, and transnational feminist frameworks this work examines the genesis and complexity of adolescent girls' sexual agency, specifically how girls begin to develop ideas of sexual attraction and intimacy, messages they internalize from family and community, and the agentic ways they actualize their feelings and desires. It considers the historical, economic, and political contexts of postcolonial T&T, and implications for future exploration of young women's and girls' sexual agency, not only in T&T, but among Caribbean women in the Diaspora. Themes analyzed in this study demonstrated that girls were knowledgeable about intimacy and sex. They identified specific moments when they are aware of sexual attraction and distinguish from other forms of love. Most girls learn about sex from trusted adult relatives who are not their parents, from peers, biology, sexual and reproductive health and health and family life courses at school, and via the internet. They read the institutionalized environments as unresponsive to their concerns and interpret their parents' lack of communication or admonishments as signals that talk about sex is taboo. Consequently, they seek information outside of the purview of adults to satisfy their needs. They want to understand how to navigate trust and consent; how to choose good partners; how to balance their future goals with a desire to have intimacy and sexual relationships in the long run. By tapping into their personal desires and motivations around sex they manifest early forms of social and political agency.

Development of the Gender Roles and Male Provision Expectations Scale.

Existing composite measures assess the extent to which women and men support masculinity ideals concerning the expectation that men should provide for their partners and families. In many contexts across sub-Saharan Africa, the male provider role is taken as given. This core masculinity tenet may be associated with related gender role expectations that result in increasing young women's risk of HIV, especially within the context of transactional sex relationships. Extant literature points to five domains potentially associated with male provider role expectations: male authority, men's sexual decision-making control, women's sexual agency, women's economic dependence, and love. The goal of this study was to develop the Gender Roles and Male Provision Expectations (GRMPE) scale toward understanding whether beliefs attached to male provider role expectations increase HIV risk. We developed the GRMPE across three research phases with young women (ages 15-24) in Central Uganda that (1) used qualitative data to refine domains and develop scale items; (2) cognitively tested the refined items; and (3) pilot tested a 26-item scale across five domains with 108 young women. Using confirmatory factor analyses, we retained 15 items across four factors, corresponding to the domains of male authority, sexual decision-making, women's sexual agency, and love; which we then modeled as indicators in a single second-order factor model. The GRMPE demonstrated initial reliability and validity, and tests of criterion validity found significant associations with known HIV risk behaviors. The GRMPE scale shows promise for better examining the determinants of HIV risk and assessing gender norm change interventions.

Transformational sexualities: Motivations of women who pay for sexual services

Previous research on client motivations to purchase sexual services in the UK has predominantly focused on the experiences of men. Women who buy sex have largely been overlooked as it is commonly assumed that women provide, rather than purchase, sexual services. In addressing this empirical absence, this article examines data gained from 49 interviews with women clients and sex workers. It examines the reasons why women decide to purchase sexual services in the UK. We argue that the increasing importance of contemporary capitalism and consumerism has shaped women's engagement in the sex industry as clients. We show how women's sexual agency and assertiveness as clients, inverts the female sex worker/male client binary assumed to characterize commercial sex and illustrates the overlap and convergence of male and female sexuality. Our research thus contributes to an understanding of female sexuality more broadly, as exemplifying the hallmarks of ‘transformational sexualities’ in cosmopolitanism (Plummer, 2015).

Women’s economic status and sexual negotiation: re-evaluation of the ‘normative precedent’ in Tanzania

Women's ability to negotiate the conditions and circumstances of sexual relations is central to their sexual and reproductive health, including mitigating HIV risk. In Africa, gender-based power imbalances constrain women's sexual agency. Research has suggested that among couples in sub-Saharan African countries, such as Uganda and Nigeria, sexual decision making is defined by a ‘normative precedent’ in the form of a set of rules and practices conferring sexual authority on men. Using qualitative data among women in paid work and among men, this study explored interpersonal relations and sexual negotiation in Tanzania. Data were collected in two sites, Dar es Salaam and Mbeya. The normative precedent for sexual decision making was universally understood by men and women. Women did not perceive paid work as giving them greater bargaining power in the domain of sex. In Mbeya, a high-HIV area, some women perceived that refusing sex would encourage men to have additional sexual partners, thus increasing their susceptibility to HIV. Other women, however, believed that suspicions about men's behaviour combined with accurate HIV knowledge, provided leverage for women to refuse sex. In both sites, challenges to the normative precedent were evident, particularly among younger men. Both men and women expressed a preference for equality in sexual decision making.

The Social Production and Salience of Young Women's Desire for Sex.

Using data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life Study, a diverse sample of 925 women updated weekly for 2.5 years, I (1) describe how desire for sex varies across and within women during the transition to adulthood; (2) explore how desire corresponds with women's social circumstances and experiences; and (3) assess the relationship between desire for sex, sexual activity, and contraceptive use. The strength of young women's desire is heterogeneous across key demographic characteristics like religiosity and social class; changes after pivotal events like sexual debut; and varies with social ecology, such as friends' attitudes. When women more strongly desire sex they are more likely to have sex and to use hormonal contraception. Moreover, the association between desire and sex is especially pronounced when women are using a hormonal method. In contrast, when women more strongly desire sex they are less likely to use condoms or withdrawal, irrespective of hormonal use. These findings suggest that sexual desire is socially situated and relevant for both anticipatory and situational decisions about contraception. Foregrounding this desire thus greatly expands scholarly conceptualizations of women's sexual agency, young adult sexuality, and cognitive social models of sexual decision-making.

How Sarah Got Her Groove Back, or Notes Toward a Black Feminist Theology of Pleasure

ABSTRACTThis article takes up the pivotal question that Sarah asks upon learning that she and Abraham are to have a child of their own: “After I am waxed old, shall I have pleasure?” (Genesis 18:12) This question indicates that Sarah prioritized pleasure, desired it, and asked questions of herself and of God in order to make space to receive it. For Black women who are looking for biblical precedent to prioritize pleasure, Sarah’s question provides a textual and theological invitation to explore what a theology of pleasure might look like for women who have thought all hope was lost. For too long, conservative theology has been used to deny Black women sexual agency, but in Sarah’s story, erotic possibility re-emerges through an insistent question that demands an answer.

Parenting, Communication about Sexuality, and the Development of Adolescent Womens' Sexual Agency: A Longitudinal Assessment.

Sexual agency (i.e., the ability to make decisions and assertions related to one's own sexuality) is associated with sexual health enhancing outcomes. Given that young women are expected to act passively, rather than with agency when it comes to sexual encounters, the present study aimed to explore whether parental support, knowledge, and communication about sexuality during late adolescence contribute to an enhancement of sexual agency in a sample of young women in the long-term. Using a longitudinal design (panel study), 320 female participants who participated in three data collection waves (T1, T2, and T5) were included in the analyses (Mage = 16.2 years, SD = 0.50 at baseline). Mediated by the frequency of parents' communication about sexuality with their daughters, both dimensions of parental support (emotional engagement and support of autonomy) positively predicted adolescent women's sexual agency two years later. In contrast, parental knowledge of their children's whereabouts was unrelated to communication and female sexual agency. Specific dimensions of parenting seem to play a crucial role in empowering adolescent girls to act agentic through communicating, emotional support, and encouraging autonomy, which in turn may contribute to healthy sexual behavior in young adulthood.

“Your Vagina Is Not Supposed to Be This Scary Monster”: Young Heterosexual Women's Recommendations for Improving Sexual Satisfaction and Implications for Sexuality Education

ABSTRACTSexual satisfaction is an important component of sexuality, yet rarely discussed in sexuality education. In an effort to better understand young adult women's experiences and thoughts about sexual pleasure and satisfaction, we conducted interviews with heterosexual young women (N = 30, ages 18–25) attending college, asking their recommendations on how to improve women's sexual satisfaction. Two coders utilized grounded theory-based thematic analysis, which revealed three dominant themes: communication with sexual partners, sexual self-awareness and acceptance, and sources of information and education. All three themes fit broadly under women's sexual agency and societal acceptance of women's sexuality. Themes are discussed in relation to their applicability to sexuality education.

Marital Rape: An Overview

Though marital rape is the most common and repugnant form of masochism in Indian society, it is hidden behind the iron curtain of marriage. Social practices and legal codes in India mutually enforce the denial of women sexual agency and bodily integrity, which lie at the heart of women human rights. Rape is rape. Be it stranger rape, date rape or marital rape. The law does not treat marital rape as a crime. Even if it does, the issue of penalty remains lost in a cloud of legal uncertainty. The legal system must be forced to accept rape within marriage as a crime. Further, women themselves must break free of societal shackles and fight for justice. They must refuse to comply with the standards applied to them as the weaker sex. Rape is an offence, which hinges on the absence of consent of the woman. It is important to realise that the absence of consent does not have to be only in the form of the word ‘no’. It should be assumed from the context of the situation. The offence of marital rape has not been sufficiently accounted for in the law.

Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces

Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces

Sex, desire and pleasure: considering the experiences of older Australian women

Older age is often associated with asexuality. That is, older individuals are not viewed as desiring of sex, nor as sexually desirable to others. Broader social and cultural norms that downplay women's sexual desire and agency further compound these phenomena. Whether this popular image accurately reflects older women's sexual desires, behaviour and capacity to experience pleasure is unclear. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 43 partnered Australian women aged 55–81, this article considers women's sexual experiences and desires in older age. The findings of our research confirm that older women's experiences of sex and sexual desire are diverse and fluid. Some of the factors that influenced participants’ sexual behaviour and desire will be considered in this article, as will their understandings of what “counts” as sexual satisfaction and “successful sex”. The factors affecting sexual behaviour and desire also influence the way in which women are able to negotiate sexual interaction with their partners. Participants expressed a need for education and resources in order to gain greater control and to make autonomous choices over their sexual experiences, desire and ability to give and receive pleasure. The implications of these findings for practitioners are also considered.

Sex, gender and money in African teenage conceptions of love in HIV contexts

In much of Africa, teenage sexualities are often understood through the optic of danger, violence and disease without much attention to love within relationship dynamics. There is a strong case to be made for the continued focus on African teenage sexualities within unequal relations of power. However, whilst focusing on the structural factors that expand sexually aggressive masculinities and limit teenage women's sexual agency, the expression of teenage love in the daily battle for power remains neglected. Drawing on an interview study of teenage Africans, aged 16–17 years, in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, the paper focuses on the micro-dynamics of love, sex and gender. Teenagers account of love highlights changing discourses and include relationships based on care, negotiation and agency showing potential for equality. Such constructions however sit in tension with teenage women's vulnerability in relation to the sexual economy and money, masculine power and gender hierarchies. Intervention programmes that address teenage sexuality must pay careful attention to how love matters in their conceptualisation of relationships and requires consideration of the social and economic context within which they are located. The challenge is to build on equality, address gender hierarchies and ideologies within relationships which create vulnerability.

Reading Crime through a Gender Lens: Intersections of Shame, Women's Alcohol Consumption and Sexual Vulnerability in a Crime Novel by Sarah Lotz

The representation of rape in crime fiction enables readers and scholars to consider issues of women's sexual victimisation and agency. Alcohol consumption plays a significant role in a large proportion of rape cases. When women are sexually assaulted after they had been drinking, shame shapes the ways in which the women, as well as society at large, engage with the sexual violence. This article explores how Sarah Lotz represents the gendered intersections of shame, women's drinking and sexual vulnerability in her crime novel, Exhibit A. The analysis reveals how shame operates to discredit and silence a female character in the aftermath of sexual assault by blaming her for her own victimisation.

Print Capitalism and Women's Sexual Agency in the Late Ottoman Empire

Increasingly, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, publications appeared in the Ottoman Empire that took issue with traditional norms of gender and sexuality and advocated alternatives. They criticized arranged marriages and supported companionate unions, attacked polygyny, stressed the importance of a fulfilling sex life in which the wife is an equal partner entitled to gratification, acknowledged sexual attraction as legitimate and viewed the choice of a partner as personally empowering, and even hinted that sexual relations outside marriage were acceptable. Studies of such publications have tended to focus on writers, their thoughts, and the influences that shaped them, generally neglecting the institutional framework that enabled this surge of publications. Focusing on book publishing, this article seeks to document the emergence of Ottoman-Turkish print capitalism and reveal its role in the production of publications that challenged established ideas of personal relations between men and women.

On his terms: representations of sexuality in women's magazines and the implications for negotiating safe sex

Research on sexual content in women's magazines has identified dominant ideologies that promote sexual role stereotypes and privilege masculinity. We extend this analysis in a thematic analysis to examine representations of sex in two best selling Australian women's magazines and to examine how such ideologies may reduce women's abilities to negotiate safe sex. One main theme – hetero monogamy – and six subsidiary themes emerged. Being in a monogamous heterosexual relationship was presented as essential for every woman's happiness, with sex as the means for achieving and maintaining this state. Five subsidiary themes, labelled gender differences, great sex, reaching orgasm, appearance and single women, reinforced the message that, for women, sex was work and required instruction. The final theme, sexual health, revealed an alarming absence of information on negotiating safe sex, apart from referring to it as an ‘awkward conversation’, whereas unprotected sex was a sign of trust and commitment. Throughout the themes, there was a lack of recognition of women's sexual desires and sexual agency. We argue that these discourses have serious implications for women's sexual health.

Erasure of Sexuality and Desire: State Morality and Sri Lankan Migrants in Beirut, Lebanon

This paper presents a critical analysis of State and non-State interventions into the intimate and sexual lives of Sri Lankan migrant women in Beirut and interrogates the ways that normative ideals of heterosexual marriage and family are regulated and enforced transnationally. Drawing on research in Lebanon and Sri Lanka in 2006–9, I juxtapose official representations of Sri Lankan migrant women with migrant accounts that disclose the diverse and often transgressive realities of migrant lives. Focusing in particular on a United Nations Development Program report, I highlight how non-State actors, deliberately or otherwise, fall in line with moralistic State discourses in ways that purposefully ignore and act to constrain women's sexual agency in diasporic situations. The promotion and repression of certain sexualities, images, desires and stereotypes leads to the marginalisation of those who deviate from the norm and places them in an even more precarious situation outside state protection.

Sluts: Heteronormative Policing in the Stories of Lesbian Youth

The power of compulsory heterosexuality regulates the sexuality of adolescent lesbians as strongly as it does their heterosexual peers. Marked with a sexual(ized) identity, young Southern lesbians in this life history study made claim to moral high ground by consistently identifying with the hegemonic good girl construct and by participating in the naming of women whose sexual behavior demonstrated a disregard for the “rules.” The good girl/bad girl, the virgin/slut binaries, played significant roles in their identity claims, in their relationships, and in their choices of friendships. Personal self-control (“just kissing”) is seen by these young women as admirable and sluts are seen as dangerous women who harm others and themselves. This article explores the marking of sluts and too experienced women in the life stories of White Southern adolescent lesbians and the continued social controls imposed on adolescent female sexuality through the devaluing of women's sexual agency.