Abstract
Women’s sexual behavior, while typically thought of as a matter of personal and individual choice, is fundamentally organized by social factors. This chapter examines how selected social factors, including religious preference, racial or ethnic group membership, and educational attainment, as well as age and marital status, shape women’s sexual desires, sexual partnerships, sexual acts, and subjective understanding of these facets of sexual experiences. While fully acknowledging the significance of biological factors in sexuality, we shall stress in this chapter the role social groups and contexts play in shaping women’s sexual conduct through their impact on the production and enforcement of socially constructed and shared conceptions of appropriate sexual behavior.
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Laumann, E.O., Mahay, J. (2002). The Social Organization of Women’s Sexuality. In: Wingood, G.M., DiClemente, R.J. (eds) Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health. Issues in Women’s Health. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0689-8_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0689-8_4
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