It’s not looking good for our libidos. First, there was the depressing news in last year’s National Sex Survey that we are having less nooky than ever before, and now apparently gender equality is the latest passion killer. Especially in marriage, which is bad news for me since I just signed up to a life of wedded bliss. Contrary to the logical assumption that shared respect, power and friendship help fuel a healthy sex life, a recent New York Times article by the psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb claims that seemingly blissful egalitarian marriages are a recipe for sexual boredom.
This conflicts with the feminist fairytale that I was sold by my single sex education (we were “educated as men” so nothing useful like home economics, just lots of woodwork and IT), and to which I have aspired ever since. The aim was to meet an equal who doesn’t expect you to be a submissive, stay-at-home housewife serving up steak and blowjobs on demand. If you want to give up work and raise your children that’s your choice too. But in putting the focus on finding a significant other who is happy to split the bills, chores and childcare and have regular, “respectful” sex have we overlooked the delicate gender balance that sparks sexual desire? “In an attempt to be gender-neutral,” says Gottlieb, “we may have become gender-neutered.”
The question of whether equality does women more harm than good is not new. It’s an easy weapon for the anti-feminist brigade to deploy whenever there’s a new push forward. The idea that powerful females will suffer because they intimidate, and are therefore unattractive to men has long been propagated by the media. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Susan Faludi commented on this trend in her 1991 book Backlash: “If the status of women has never been higher, why is their emotional state so low? …The prevailing wisdom of the past decade has supported only one answer to this riddle: it must be all that equality that's causing all that pain.”
But, the modern twist in Gottlieb’s theory is that apparently it’s the women whose sex drive is dwindling. Watching your partner wash dishes, cook dinner and iron underwear might stop you nagging but could be a massive turn off. According to a study from Washington and Madrid, entitled Egalitarianism, Housework and Sexual Frequency in Marriage, couples where the men do all the “feminine” chores (laundry, cooking, cleaning) have sex 1.5 fewer times a month. It’s not just the quantity but also the quality that suffers, with women experiencing greater sexual satisfaction when men take on more traditional domestic roles.
While this stark sexual picture plays on women's worst “can’t have it all” fears, it has some validity in a world where hordes of professional females read Fifty Shades of Grey while commuting to their high powered jobs and then rush home to try out some form of submissive sex with their partners (my friends certainly did). Are women secretly longing to be treated in a more feminine manner? And before we head down the aisle should my fiancé and I consider resetting our own gender balance? We definitely conform to what Gottlieb calls a “peer partnership” – we both have demanding jobs, I rarely cook (weekends aside), I’m usually the one coming home late from the office or drinks with the girls, he spends far longer grooming his beard than I spend on either hair or make-up, I always take the rubbish out, and when Euro 2012 was on he would only let me watch the football if I let him read my Sunday Times Style.
There’s no denying that this arrangement makes us both deeply happy and secure. It’s modern, metrosexual and everything I dreamed of. But, do I find it more attractive when I see him doing more manly things such as DIY and mowing the lawn? Yes, possibly. Would I feel more romantically inclined if he wrestled with the bin bags on rainy mornings? Yes, definitely. On the flip side, I’m sure our passion levels would rise if I occasionally welcomed him home with a nice dinner and a seductive outfit, learnt to make a roast and overcame my opposition to baking. According to an article in The Sunday Times, academics believe that as the functions of men and women increasingly blur, our “sexual scripts” (the way we behave and respond sexually) are out of sync with our social evolution.
While I am not about to revert to a more 1950s-style domestic set-up, I do think that maybe equality has made us slightly lazy in the bedroom. Last November, the results of the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles revealed that 16-44 year olds were having sex less than five times a month. Compare that with figures of more than six times a month in the same studies 10 and 20 years earlier. It’s clear that modern life is making us lose our libido and while constant access to social media and recession worries are often cited as the cause, it’s feasible that the increase in gender equal “best friend” pairings also plays a role.
Maybe this trend will be reversed over time and sameness will become sexy. In the meantime you could just invest in a cleaner and devote more time to bedroom gymnastics. But, ripping someone’s clothes off on a regular basis doesn’t always a happy marriage make. If in the short-term we have to forfeit a bit of animal attraction for the satisfaction of life with an equal then so be it. We've already figured out how 50/50 marriages should work—it can’t be long before we get to grips with 50/50 sex.
