The Prevalence of Gender Ballet on Sex among Young Couples: Some Results on Italy and Other Six Countries

Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna, University of Padua
Letizia Mencarini, University of Florence

The timing of first sexual intercourse within a couple can be viewed as a compromise between desires and powers of the two partners. In the Gender Ballet of Sex, men would prefer to have sex quickly whereas women refuse for an extended period of time. The aim of our paper is to verify if this gender ballet is a remnant of "double standards" or a persistent typology of gender dynamics. The diffusion of Gender Ballet as an analytical framework is compared with other possible frameworks used to explain first sex among young couples. The study is based on data from a new cross-cultural survey which focuses on students aged 19-22 of Italy, Russia, Japan, Bulgaria, Rumania, Poland, and USA. The analysis is particularly developed for Italy, where our research deals with a national representative sample, involving around 5,000 university students from 23 universities.