Half of young women reported having a first sexual experience before they were ‘competent’. Is it the fault of the law – or is it more complicated?
The headline was enough to make you drop your marmalade: half of young women, and 43% of young men, said that they were not “competent” when they lost their virginity, in a survey of nearly 3,000 17- to 24-year-olds released this week. If the idea of sexual competence strikes you as inherently droll, Melissa Palmer, who conducted the study as a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, helpfully subdivided it into four areas: consent, autonomy, contraceptive use and “readiness”. The study looked only at heterosexual encounters.
Consent was measured by a three-option question about willingness: were you and your partner equally willing, were you more willing, were they more willing? This yielded the finding that nearly 20% of women felt less willing than their partner.
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