Sexuality  Strategies Patterns and Social Stratification

among Young Men in St Petersburg and Finland

Anna Rotkirch and Elina Haavio-Mannila

University of Helsinki

We compare sexual patterns in two neighboring, yet socio-economically and culturally quite different areas: Finland and St Petersburg in North-Western Russia.

We look at the impact of social status on sexual experiences – intercourse, sexual initiation, multiple partners, and relationship to the partner - of military conscripts in St Petersburg and army recruits in Finland age surveyed in 2003. In order to interpret and validate our findings we also compare them with earlier survey data. from Finland, St Petersburg, Estonia and Sweden providing information also about the behavior of older birth cohorts. We found that social status relates in opposite ways to sexual activity for young men in these two areas.

In Finland, more educated men had started sexual intercourse at later age and had less sexual partners than less educated men. In St Petersburg, on the contrary, the more educated young men reported most partners. In all four areas, wealthy men had most sex.

We discuss these findings in the light of script theory (Simon & Gagnon 1984) and sexual strategies theory (D.M. Buss & Schmitt 1993). In Russsia, social uncertainty has prevailed since the mid-1980s and social polarisation has increased rapidly. There is also a legacy of double sexual standards for men and for women and relatively low moral pressure towards monogamy or participating fatherhood for young men. In such a highly competitive environment, young men are forced to take higher risks, and young women probably pay even more attention to social status in their choice of sexual partners than in socially more equal countries.