Beautiful and highly educated women are more likely to be rigidly heterosexual than those with less social clout because they follow the “path of least resistance”, a study claims.
By contrast, men with university degrees appear to be more prepared to experiment with their sexuality.
Women who become mothers in their teens or early twenties are more likely to start sexual relationships with other women than those who delay motherhood.
Elizabeth McClintock, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame in Paris, examined data on the sexual preferences of 5,000 women and 4,200 men between the ages of 16 and 28.
She found that women who were better educated and rated as more attractive were more likely to call themselves “100 per cent heterosexual”.
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Dr McClintock wrote: “Highly educated, physically attractive, childless women have greater access to desirable male partners; all else equal, this may increase their likelihood of identifying as heterosexual.”
Men tend to have much less fluid sexual identities, and so university may give them the opportunity to explore whether they were attracted to other men.
Overall, the analysis found that about 6 per cent of men and 13 per cent of women in their early twenties said that they were attracted to other members of their own sex. Only 3 per cent of men and 4 per cent of women said they had had a same-sex sexual experience.
Dr McClintock believes that sexuality is largely the product of social forces rather than biology. Her paper is due to be presented at the American Sociological Association’s conference today.