Sexual Script - Gender Roles

Gender Roles

Gender Schema Theory also plays a part in sexual script because studies show that males and females interact in different ways, even from a young age. In 1991, Martha Boston and Gary Levy found that through their research observations, children, primarily boys, were better with being able to sequence own-sex rather than other-sex scripts. "As well as acquiring knowledge about the sex-role stereotypes of their culture, young children also develop sex-typed attitudes, preferences, and behaviors that pervade many aspects of their lives." At a young age, children learn from their sex-roles in which later relate to the way in which they interact through their sexual scripting. A double standard exists in the traditional heterosexual sexual script. It endorses different sexual behavior for women and men, whereby women are expected to confine sexual behavior to the context of a committed relationship and men are expected to engage in sexual behavior in all kinds of relationships. Research, however, demonstrates that the expectation that women and men follow this traditional sexual script has lessened and become more subtle over time, especially in the context of established relationships, and that couples may use other kinds of scripts instead.