A new study undertaken by to discover worldwide sexual patterns, with the results published on the American Psychological Association website shows that when the two genders are close in economic equality, more sex is sure to follow.
Presented by psychologist Roy Baumeister of Florida State University at the annual meeting of the APA, the report shows that equating sex to a scarce resource (from the man’s perspective generally) leads to women sitting in the driver’s seat, so to speak. The decision as to when to first engage and thereafter how often is usually left to the woman.
In an interesting twist however, Baumeister describes how the situation can be reversed given the right circumstances such as that which now exists on many college campuses where women now outnumber men. In such situations, it falls to the men to decide who and when, breaking age old maxims that suggest it’s always the other way around.
In other situations, Baumeister says that sex is used as a bargaining tool when there are discrepancies in economic terms, i.e. when the man makes a lot more money than the woman. In these cases, women who feel at the mercy of the man in their life, resort to using sex as a tool to help them get what they want. Though, Baumeister is quick to point out this doesn’t mean exchanging diamonds for favors; it’s much more subtle than that. It’s more like helping a man reconsider his position on things when he suddenly realizes he may be talking himself out of some action in the bedroom later on.
Men on the other hand, because of the longstanding nature of being the more richly endowed gender, economically speaking, of course, have learned to go along with the way things are as a means of obtaining what he wants from his partner. The result Baumeister says is a situation of distrust and one upmanship between people in intimate relationships, leading to what many refer to, as the war between the sexes.
That all goes away, he says, when women make just as much money as the man in their life, especially if there are children involved. This is because no one has the upper hand, and thus is in no position to dictate terms to the other. Couples instead meet each other halfway, and in the process learn to do what works best for them as couple, rather than as separate individuals constantly fighting with one