Sexual Economics Essay Example for Free

Sexual Economics Essay Abstract A heterosexual community can be analyzed as a marketplace in which men seek to acquire sex from women by offering other resources in exchange. Societies will therefore define gender roles as if women are sellers and men buyers of sex. Societies will endow female sexuality, but not male sexuality, with value (as in virginity, fidelity, chastity). The sexual activities of different couples are loosely interrelated by a marketplace, instead of being fully separate or private, and each couples decisions may be influenced by market conditions. Economic principles suggest that the price of sex will depend on supply and demand, competition among sellers, variations in product, collusion among sellers, and other factors. Research findings show gender asymmetries (reflecting the complementary economic roles) in prostitution, courtship, infidelity and divorce, female competition, the sexual revolution and changing norms, unequal status between partners, cultural suppression of female sexuality, abusive relationships, rape, and sexual attitudes. Sexual activity is often regarded as among the most private of activities, negotiated by two individuals on the basis of their own individual desires and values. Idealistic treatments describe the two individuals as potentially equal and interchangeable. In this manuscript, we place sexual negotiations in the context of a cultural system in which men and women play different roles resembling buyer and seller — in a marketplace that is ineluctably affected by the exchanges between other buyers and sellers. In recent decades, two main theoretical approaches have dominated the field of sexuality. One of these emphasizes biological determinants, especially as shaped by evolutionary pressures. The other emphasizes social construction, especially as shaped by political forces. Both have proposed to explain differences between men and women. The evolutionary approach stresses the different reproductive strategies of men and women and the difference as to what pattern of sexual respon se would have led to the highest quality and number of successful offspring. The social constructionist approach, generally based on feminist theory, has emphasized male subjugation of women and how women respond to their oppressed position in society. Thus, the disciplines of biology and politics have been most prominent in guiding how psychologists think about sex. This article turns to a different discipline, namely economics, in order to elucidate a theory of sexual interactions. An economic approach to human behavior was defined by (subsequent) Nobel laureate Gary Becker (1976) as having four main assumptions. First, the behavior of individuals is interconnected in market systems in which individual choices are shaped by costs and benefits in the context of stable preferences. Second, scarce but desirable resources are allocated by price shifts and other market influences. Third, sellers of goods or services compete with each other (as buyers also sometimes do, but not as much). Fourth, people seek to maximize their outcomes. Although initially economists focused on material goods and material needs, many have begun to look at nonmaterial goods (such as services) and nonmonetary media of exchange (such as time or emotion). In adopting such an approach, our theory will therefore be primarily cultural in the sense that it looks at how individual behavior is shaped by the market and other aspects of the collective network, but just as economic exchange is based on what nature has shaped people to want and need, natural motivations and tendencies will provide a foundation for the sexual economy. Although applying economic principles to sex may seem novel, psychology has invoked economic theories in other contexts. Social exchange theory has been used to analyze a broad range of social interactions (e.g., Blau, 1964; Homans, 1950, 1961; Sprecher, 1998), based on the assumption that each party in an interaction gives something and gets something in return. Analyzing the costs and benefits of various interpersonal behavior furnishes a useful basis for making predictions about how people will think, feel, and choose to act. In our view, previous attempts to apply social exchange theory to sex have neglected one crucial aspect, which will be featured in this manuscript. Specifically, sex is a female resource. Put another way, cultural systems will tend to endow female sexuality with value, whereas male sexuality is treated by society as relatively worthless. As a result, sexual intercourse by itself is not an equal exchange, but rather an instance of the man getting something of value from the woman. To make the exchange equal, the man must give her something else in return, and his own sexual participation does not have enough value to constitute this. How much he gives her in terms of nonsexual resources will depend on the price (so to speak) set by the local culture and on her relative standing on valued sexual characteristics (see Table 1). When sex happens, therefore, it will often be in a context in which the man gives the woman material gifts, consideration and respect, commitment to a relationship as desired by her, or other goods. There are two main parts to this manuscript. The first will consist of an extended exposition of the theory. We shall attempt to develop and elaborate the economic analysis of sex from an exchange perspective as thoroughly as we can, even extending to aspects and predictions that are not fully testable against extant data. The second section will then review published empirical findings about many patterns of sexual behavior, as a way of evaluating the exchange theory’s capacity to account for what is known. Social Exchange and Female Resource Theory Social exchange theory analyzes interactions between two parties by examining the costs and benefits to each. Interactions are only likely to continue if each party gains more than it loses. Crucially, the exchange analysis assumes that in each social interaction each person gives something to the other and gains something from the other (hence the exchange). The value of what is gained and exchanged depends in part on the preferences of the individuals and in part on the broader market. By applying economic principles to social rewards, one can make predictions about how social behavior will proceed. How much someone pays for a banana, for example, depends partly on that person’s hunger and liking for bananas, but also partly on the shifting balance between the local community’s supply of bananas and its demand for them. The central point to our social exchange analysis of sex is that sex is essentially a female resource. When a man and a woman have sex, therefore, the woman is giving something of value to the man. In that sense, the interaction is one-sided — unless the man gives the woman something else of comparable value. Although the social exchange analysis will invoke a social system to explain sex and is therefore essentially a cultural theory, ironically its most famous advocate came from evolutionary theory (although Cott, 1977, developed a similar line of analysis in a feminist historical context). Symons (1979) observed that â€Å"Everywhere sex is understood to be something females have that males want† (p. 253). By â€Å"everywhere† he meant in all cultures and historical eras, although to be sure he only presented observations from a handful of these. Indeed, he offered relatively little in the way of empirical evidence for his theory, a deficiency that the present article seeks to remedy (aided by the substantial amount of empirical data on sex that have been produced in the decades since Symons’ book was published). Symons also did not find it useful to consider how economic theory might elaborate his basic observation. Nonetheless, his work deserves recognition for h aving put forth the observation that sex is essentially something that women provide and men desire. Although not many others have explicitly discussed sex as a female resource, we believe that that view is implicit, though often unstated, in many writings. For example, James Q. Wilson (2001) has recently published a widely influential sociological analysis of the decline of marriage in Western cultures, in the course of which he found it necessary to invoke unsupported assumptions such as â€Å"If the culture offers sexual access and does not require in exchange personal commitment, a lot of men will take the sex every time† (p. 15; although no sources or evidence were cited to back up this assertion). Later he speculated that if the government wanted to make marriages more durable, the most effective policy intervention would be to require that fathers retain custody of children after divorce, because this would reduce the men’s ability to attract new sex partners — the implicit assumption being that divorces are caused because husbands but not wives leave their spouses in order to gain access to new, more exciting sex partners. In effect, this policy would reduce what the divorcing husband could offer another woman in exchange for sex. Thus, again, the view of sex as a female resource was implicit in his reasoning, but he did not have any scholarly basis for evaluating that view. Our hope is that an open statement and appraisal of the female resource theory of sexual economy can enable such analyses to have a strong, explicit basis in research findings, including frank recognition of its limitations — and we think that would be preferable to relying on impres sions and stereotypes, as many writers currently must. Sex as Female Resource A consideration of the cultural economy of sex goes beyond the simple recognition that men want sex from women. Insofar as that is generally true, the social network will recognize it and organize the behavior of individuals and couples on that basis. Treating sex as a female resource means that each culture (we define culture as an informationbased social system) will endow female sexuality with value, unlike male sexuality. Women will receive other valued goods in return for their sexual favors. Male sexuality, in contrast, cannot be exchanged for other goods. Put another way, women become the suppliers of sex, whereas men constitute the demand for it and play the role of purchasers and consumers. Even though in one sense a man and a woman who are having sexual intercourse are both doing similar things, socially they are doing quite different things. Thus, the first prediction based on the social exchange theory of sex is that interpersonal processes associated with sexual behavior will reveal a fundamental difference in gender roles. Men will offer women other resources in exchange for sex, but women will not give men resources for sex (except perhaps in highly unusual circumstances). In any event, the bottom line is that sexual activity by females has exchange value, whereas male sexuality does not. Female virginity, chastity, fidelity, virtuous reputation, and similar indicators will have positive values that will be mostly absent in the male (see Table 1). Put another way, it will matter more to the formation and continuation of a relationship whether the woman is a virgin than whether the man is; whether the woman engages in sex with another partner than whether the man does; and so forth. Why a Female Resource? Why would sex be a female resource? Symons’s (1979) original answer focused on reproductive strategies shaped by evolution as the ultimate cause. In his account, the minimal male investment in parenthood is almost zero, whereas for a woman it is substantial. Therefore, he proposed, sex for a man is all benefit with little or no cost, whereas for a woman the potential cost (possible pregnancy, with pain and possibly death attending childbirth) is substantial even if the pleasure is quite high. The risk of high cost will be an incentive for the woman to hold back, and so the man must offer her some benefits to offset this. However, Symons also acknowledged (p. 261) that human beings do not necessarily care about these ultimate causes, and so the immediate psychological factors that lead people to treat sex as a medium of exchange require further explanation. A somewhat different explanation for why sex is a female resource can be deduced from motivational differences. Social exchange theory has featured the â€Å"principle of least interest† (Waller Hill, 1951). According to that principle, a party gains power by virtue of wanting a connection less than the other wants it. For example, Waller and Hill proposed that the person who is less in love has more power to shape and influence the relationship, because the one who is more in love will be more willing to make compromises and offer other inducements in order to keep the relationship going. If men want sex more than women, therefore, men would have to offer other benefits to persuade women to have sex, even if women desire and enjoy sex too. Is it plausible that men desire sex more than women? A literature review recently examined the question of gender differences in sex drive by comparing men and women on behavioral indices of sex drive (Baumeister, Catanese, Vohs, 2001). On every measure, men were found to display greater sexual motivation than women. Specifically, men think about sex more often, have more frequent fantasies, are more frequently aroused, desire sex more often (both early and late in relationships, and outside of relationships), desire a higher number of sex partners, masturbate more frequently, are less willing to forego sex and are less successful at celibacy (even when celibacy is supported by personal religious commitments), enjoy a greater variety of sexual practices, take more risks and expend more resources to obtain sex, initiate more goal directed behavior to get sex, refuse sex less often, commence sexual activity sooner after puberty, have more permissive and positive attitudes toward most sexual behaviors, are less prone to report a lack of sexual desire, and rate their sex drives as stronger than women. No findings indicated that women had a stronger sex drive than men on any measure. Although certainly there are some women with high sex drives and some men with relatively low ones, these are exceptions, and moreover these exceptional types do not appear to form mismatched couples very often. Byers and Lewis (1988) found that half the couples in their large sample disagreed about sex at least once a month, and without exception all of the disagreements involved the man wanting sexual activity while the woman did not. Likewise, a large sample of couples studied by McCabe (1987) found that the category of partnered individuals who wanted sex but were not having it (â€Å"reluctant virgins†) consisted almost entirely of men. Thus, the sexual negotiations of couples appear to center around the men’s efforts to induce the women to have sex, and not the reverse. The gender difference in sex drive applies both to new and established relationships. Therefore the principle of least interest might predict that men would continue to give resources for sex throughout the relationship. Within established relationships, however, the rules of exchange may be blurred by several factors. In modern marriage, for example, resources are generally jointly owned by both couples, and so the woman already technically has claim to all her husband’s resources. This limits what more he can offer her, thereby removing the basis for exchange or negotiation. Possibly her role is simply to give him enough sex to sustain the marriage. The exchange may also be concealed or complicated by other aspects of long-term marriage, such as declining sex appeal with aging, and the reduced freedom of both spouses to seek other partners and thereby ensure that they get full market value. A last perspective on why sex is a female resource would invoke the economic subjugation of women in society. In hunter-gatherer and subsistence farming societies, men and women already had separate roles and spheres of activity, both of which made vital contributions to survival. The development of a broader sphere of economic and political activity occurred mainly from the male sphere, however, and so as wealth and power were created in society, they were created by and owned by men, leaving women at a disadvantage (see Wood Eagly, 2002). Sex was one of the few resources women had with which to barter for access to these new, social resources (and the material resources that often depended on the social resources). The social exchange surrounding sex may therefore be especially associated with cultures and periods in which women lack avenues other than being a supplier of sex for obtaining material and social resources. The Local Sexual Marketplace Most theories of sex have acknowledged that local norms exist to guide behavior, and even that people are curious to learn about the sex acts of others as a way of learning what those norms are. The exchange theory endows those norms with much greater power and importance, however. One crucial feature of the social exchange analysis is that all the sexual activities within a community are loosely interconnected as part of a sexual marketplace. Sex is therefore not entirely a private matter between two consenting adults. Rather, sex becomes part of an economic system, just as the sale of a house is not purely a transaction between two parties but is tied in to the local economy and housing market. Stated this way, our analysis is compatible with recent dynamical systems approaches to gender differences in mate selection. A comprehensive paper emphasizing emergent social norms during mate selection (Kenrick, Li, Butner, 2003) noted that male and female mate selection does not occur in a vacuum but rather that men and women influence each other’s sexual choices. This reciprocal-influences approach is similar to our perspective, in which the local cultural marketplace influences the behavior of individuals, which in turn changes local norms and expectations, which cycle around again to influence individuals’ behavior. Hence in our model, the local culture and the individuals therein affect one another in a recursive fashion. The social exchange analysis emphasizes that sex is a female resource, so that men must offer women other resources in exchange for it. But how much? The price of sex (so to speak) may vary widely. In order to commence a sexual relationship with a particular woman, a man may have to offer her a fancy dinner, or a long series of compliments, or a month of respectful attention, or a lifetime promise to share all his wealth and earnings with her exclusively. This price is negotiated between the two individuals in the context of the prices that other, similar couples set. Sexual norms thus constitute a kind of local going rate as to the appropriate price for sex. Across cultures and across different historical periods, the going rate may vary widely. Within a given community, however, it probably varies much less. Market forces will tend to stabilize this rate within a community (but not necessarily across communities). To illustrate, suppose a particular woman demands too high a price for sex, such as if she refuses to have sex until the man has promised to marry her and has given her an engagement ring. Her suitor may abandon her and turn his attention to another woman – but only if other women in the community will offer sex at a significantly lower price. If all the woman in her community demand an engagement ring before giving sex, however, the man will be more likely to agree. A related prediction is that a low price of sex favors men, whereas a high price favors women. Therefore men will tend to support initiatives that lower the price of sex, whereas women will generally try to support a higher price. Ideologies of â€Å"free love† (that is, sex unaccompanied by any other obligations or exchanges) will appeal to men more than women. The price of sex is not restricted to money, of course. Our broad conceptualization of resources (as money, material gifts, respect, love, time, affection, or commitment) is consistent with arguments that women do not select their sex partners on the basis of material goods alone. A recent analysis (Miller, Putcha, Pederson, 2002) noted that during much of humans’ evolutionary history, people lived in small groups. Typically, a group of men brought back meat for the group and all the meat was shared. Miller et al. argued that this arrangement obscured individual hunting ability, and therefore women could not easily use gifts of material resources as a sign of long-term mate potential. With a broader conceptualization of resources, however, it would still be possible for a woman to detect the desirability of individual men within her community because she could see how much attention, affection, or time each gave to her. In short, we may regard a local sexual marketplace as a loose community in which men and women act as individual agents seeking to find an advantageous deal. Men will act like buyers who want to get good sex or plenty of sex without spending too much (in terms of time, effort, money, or commitment). Women will act like sellers who want to get a high price for their sexual favors. Each couple may negotiate its own price, but whether this price is a better deal for the man or for the woman depends on how it compares to the going rate within their community. Because much sexual activity is conducted in secret, there is likely to be considerable ambiguity about what the actual norms are. Another prediction is therefore that men and women will seek to convey different impressions. Men would be likely to try to create the impression that many couples are having sex at a low price. Women are more likely to emphasize that sex is unusual outside of serious, committed relationships. Male conversation may feature and exaggerate sexual activity, whereas female conversation should conceal and understate sex. Supply and Demand The laws of supply and demand can be substantiated in all sorts of marketplaces, and there is no reason that sex should be an exception. With sex, the female resource hypothesis depicts that women constitute the supply and men constitute the demand. Patterns of sexual activity should change drastically with the balance between supply and demand, such as the sex ratio. When the pool of eligible women (that is, young, unattached female adults) is much larger than the pool of eligible men, supply can be said to exceed demand. The price will therefore drop, which means that men will be able to obtain sex without giving or promising much in return. In contrast, a shortage of eligible women relative to men means that demand outstrips supply, and so the price is likely to be high. Thus, contrary to any simple view that power in the marketplace depends on having a majority, the price of sex will tend to favor the minority gender. More precisely, men will give women more resources for sex when men outnumber women than when women outnumber men. Another common result of shortages of desired goods is that low-cost substitutes become available. Prostitution and pornography may be regarded as low-cost substitutes for the preferred alternative of having sexual relations with a special, desired partner (e.g., Cott, 1977). The economics of the sexual marketplace would suggest that such low-cost alternatives will be targeted for men and to varying degrees will be welcomed by men. In contrast, women should generally oppose them as if they represent a threat to women generally — which they do, in an important sense. Put another way, why should a woman care whether men in her community purchase pornographic materials and masturbate? But if pornography satisfies some of the male demand for sex, then it may reduce the total demand for her own sexual favors, and as a result the price she can obtain will be lower. Assuming that most men would prefer to have sex with affectionate female partners (as opposed to prostitutes or by masturbating while watching pornography), the women in a community would potentially have a monopoly if they could band together to reduce competition among themselves. A rational economic strategy that many monopolies or cartels have pursued is to try to increase the price of their assets by artificially restricting the supply. With sex, this would entail having the women put pressure on each other to exercise sexual restraint and hold out for a high price (such as a commitment to marriage) before engaging in sex. Economic history suggests that such efforts, as in the case of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) are only intermittently successful and may often be undermined as individuals seek to underbid each other. Still, monopolies are sometimes sufficiently successful that most developed nations have found it necessary to enact laws against them. It would therefore not be surprising that economic self-interest would occasionally drive women to work together to restrain the availability of sex.