Women learn to play it like a man

-- The permissive revolution has almost wiped out differences in sexual habits between men and women, according to a comprehensive study of sex lives over nearly 60 years.

The researchers argue that this has come about because women's sexual attitudes and experience have been transformed, while men's have hardly changed since the 1940s.

They find a near-quadrupling in the proportion of teenage women who are sexually active, while the age at which they lose their virginity has fallen by four years.

Guilt about sex has declined sharply, while attitudes to premarital sex have reversed since the 1940s — slightly more men than women now disapprove of a couple sleeping together before their wedding night.

Jean Twenge, associate professor in psychology at San Diego State University in California, who led the research, said: "In the 1950s and 1960s, men and women were a long way apart; now the gender differences have almost disappeared. The 1960s might have been called the 'sexual revolution', but they were just the beginning."

Although the research is American, Twenge said trends such as improving social equality for women and greater access to contraception meant the findings would also be relevant to Britain.

"The trends we are seeing are pretty common across all western countries, including the UK," said Twenge. "Many young people see these patterns as the long-overdue shedding of arbitrary restrictions on sexuality." --