Mating Strategies in Sexually Egalitarian Cultures

Abstract Cross-cultural empirical research testing evolutionary perspectives and human universals are important. There is considerable variation in women’s rights, traditional gender roles, and political influence across different societies. Competing theories provide different explanations and predictions for sex differences observed in humans. Social role theory explicitly predicts a reduction in sex differences in more gender egalitarian societies due to societal influence on gender roles, whereas sexual strategies theory, although not being dismissive of cultural influence or effects of local ecological factors, predicts more stable sex differences based on parental investment theory and women and men have faced different adaptive problems throughout evolutionary history. Here we present more than a decade of empirical research from Norway, one of the most egalitarian societies in the world. We find no support for consistently smaller sex differences in samples from Norway in interest in sexual variation, sociosexuality, partner preferences, reasons for sex, sexual initiative and response, sexual over- and underperception, sexual regret and postcoital emotions, jealousy responses, or derogation and self-promotion. We conclude from these many studies that empirical predictions from social role theory are not supported. In contrast, the strong pervasiveness of sex differences across sexually egalitarian cultures supports predictions from sexual strategies theory.