An examination of sexual strategies used by urban Southern and rural Midwestern university women

Journal of Sex Research, Nov, 2005 by Peter B. Anderson, Anthony P. Kontos, Holly Tanigoshi, Cindy Struckman Johnson

In 1800, 95% of the United States population lived in the countryside. By 1900 only 65% of the population was still rural, and today, less than 25% of the population remains in rural areas (Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia, 2003). Menard and Ruback (2003) noted that rural environments are characterized by greater acquaintance density (i.e., a close network of familiarity among rural residents), greater physical isolation, and a social climate that fosters mistrust of government and more informal control by the community. Rural women in Pennsylvania and Kentucky were reported to be more likely to lack social support, live in poverty, lack education, and live in counties with few services available to help them than urban women (Logan, Walker, Cole, Ratliff, & Leukefeld, 2003; Menard & Ruback). Atav and Spencer (2002) reported that rural youth in upstate New York were more likely to report frequent use of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs and to engage in earlier intercourse experiences than their urban counterparts. These conditions could increase the likelihood that rural youth will experience sexual abuse and be unlikely to report abuse to the authorities. Ruback and Menard (2001) reported that the absolute number of sexual victimization reports was higher in urban areas, but the rate of sexual victimization reports was higher in rural areas.

Comparisons on measures of sexual experiences, attitudes, or behaviors between persons in different regions of the country can be found in publications of nationwide surveys. Authors of the Janus Report (1993) concluded that people in the South have the earliest onset of sex and the most premarital sex and that people in the Midwest report the least amount of sexual activity. Unfortunately, the regional comparisons are not broken down by gender and therefore are not directly related to our attempts to compare these groups of women on measures of the use of sexual strategies. Lauman and Michaels (2001) reported that urban women are more likely than rural women to have been forced by a man to have sex (21% vs. 18%). This finding is relevant to our study and contradicts the data presented by Ruback and Menard (2001). However, their results are not specific to our particular urban versus rural population because the Lauman and Michaels data are a reflection of all urban versus all rural areas in the U.S., not broken down by region.

Results from published studies that provide rural/urban comparisons are equivocal. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report on the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey (1999) provides data on three of the predictors in this study. The CDC results suggested that significantly more students from our urban Southern sample were likely to have experienced past physical abuse (in the form of being in fights or threatened with a weapon at school), to have started intercourse before age 13, and to have had four or more lifetime sexual partners than our rural Midwestern sample. In addition, Lauman and Michaels (2001) reported a higher percent of forced sex experienced by urban, as compared to rural, women.

Women's Use of Sexual Strategies

Several studies utilizing university students have documented women's use of non-physical coercion (e.g., verbal, social, and psychological pressure, or taking advantage of a man while he is intoxicated) and physical force sexual strategies toward men (Anderson, 1998; Struckman-Johnson, Struckman-Johnson, & Anderson, 2003). Reported differences between college women from the U.S. Midwest, the U.S. East, and the U.S. South indicate that geographic setting is important, but the existence of so few comparative studies leaves a gap in the research literature that could increase our understanding of women's use of sexual strategies.

Struckman-Johnson et al. (2003) reported that 26% of the 101 women in their sample of Midwestern college women reported the use of at least one post-refusal sexual persistence tactic. While 15% of the women reported using manipulation and lies, 5% reported using intoxication and 3% reported ever using physical force.

Anderson (1998) examined the effects of United States geographic setting (e.g., living in the East vs. living in the South) on women's use of seductive, coercive, abusive, and physically forceful strategies to obtain sexual contact with men. Women (East, n = 212; South, n = 249) were compared on their responses to items on the Sexually Aggressive Behavior Scale (Anderson, 1996). The women from the South were significantly less likely to engage in behaviors classified post-hoc as sexual abuse (7.3% vs. 21.1%) or physical force (1.6% vs. 7.1%), but not sexual coercion (25.7% vs. 28.5%), to obtain sex from a man than the women from the East. Anderson argued that context did matter, that the culture of the South versus the East allowed for different social learning experiences, and that these learning differences likely led to differences in the use of sexual strategies.