A Study on the Sexual Diversity and Gender Role Stereotypes of the Married College Students in Iran: Differences Between Female and Male Students Akram Khamseh . Ph.D., Alzahra University, Women Research Center Sexual behavior is an important aspect of the marital life. It provides both a bond of pleasure and a potential for conflict in the couples relationship. Sexuality generally is used to a combination of concepts, and behaviors, including those of gender identity, attitudes, experiences, activities and associated thoughts and feelings (Dennerstien et al., 2001 ) . Individuals develop their own sense of sexual identity and desire in the context of their ethnic group and prevailing set of gender roles. For women, cultural constructions of sexuality lead to an ongoing tension between pleasure and danger (Crawford & Unger, 2004). Men, in contrast were supposed to be always expert in this behavior (Hyde, 1996). Consistent with literature women in Iran also tend to be more sexually conservative. It is traditional stereotype in our culture that a good woman is not supposed to talk about sexuality in marital life, yet sexuality is viewed as a healthy and normal part of life. Men and women with acquisition of gender role stereotypes as a set of shared cultural beliefs about masculinity and femininity also shape schemata for sexual behavior (Brannon, 2002). In order to explore more on the issue of sexual stereotypes, we conducted a study with the aim of comparing the sexual behaviors between married college students and their relationship with gender role stereotypes. Methods Sample: Sixty married college students (30 females and 30 males) from two universities (Alzahra & Allameh universities) of Tehran were randomly selected. The age range of the group was 19 42. Instruments: Data reported here are based on three self-rating instruments. Brief description of these instruments follows: 1. Bem Sex Role Inventory BSRI - Persian form. BSRI consists 60 adjective or descriptive phrases (Bem, 1974). We adopted BSRI to Iranian culture. It has adequate psychometric properties (e.g. internal consistency is 0.67 and 0.75 and concurrent validity is 0.75 and 0.90 for women and men respectively). Having taken the BSRI Persian form, an individual can be placed in one of four sex-type categories: masculine, feminine, androgynous or undifferentiated. 2. Personal Experiences Questionnaire PEQ Persian form. There are 22 items in the original format of PEQ (Dennerstein, 2001). Because of cultural peculiarities, some items from the original PEQ were not used. PEQ Persian consists of 14 items. In a pilot study (Khamseh, no published manuscript), we found adequate test-retest reliability and validity ( e.g. internal consistency is 0 .51 and test retest reliability is 0.69). The questionnaire examines feeling of partner, sexual responsivity, sexual frequency, libido and partner problems. 3. General Demographic questionnaire which consists of the personal information such as age, sex, education, marital and socio-economic status. Results Scores on the PEQ-Persian for women and men are presented in table 1. 1 Table 1 Scores on PEQ-Persian for 60 married college students in Iran. Variable PEQ-Persian, Mean(SD) Statistical test for comparison female 3.39 (0.49) male 3.45 (0.51) td.f. = 58 = 0.45 The results show that there are not any significant differences between female and male in total score of sexual behavior, but there are significant differences between male and female students with respect to orgasm: 18/30 (60%) of women and 27/30 (90%) of men reported orgasm (2 = 17.94, P0.05). on the other hand, in terms of feeling to partner (e.g. discomfort) there was not any man (N= 0) who reported strong discomfort from his wife, while six women reported such a discomfort (2=14.46, P0.05). Frequency and percentages of sexual satisfaction / dissatisfaction with respect to sex-types categories of BSRI-Persian are presented in table 2. Table 2 Frequency and percentages of sexual satisfaction / dissatisfaction with respect to BSRI-Persian categories in female and male college students of Iran. * P0.05 PEQ-Persian, Mean(SD) Variable Femininity masculinity androgynous undifferentiated Statistical test for comparison Females N (%) Sexual satisfaction 7 (23.3%) 2 (6.7%) 4 (13.3%) 0 (0%) Sexual dissatisfaction 14(46.7%) 1 (3.3%) 0 (0%) 2 (6.7%) 2d.f.=3 = 8.28* Males N(%) Sexual satisfaction 3 (10%) 8 (26.7%) 2 (6.7%) 3 (10%) Sexual dissatisfaction 1 (3.3%) 3 (10%) 4 (13.3%) 5 (16.7%) 2d.f.=3 = 4.99 2 As table 2 indicates ,women with dominant femininity gender role stereotypes have the most percentages of sexual dissatisfaction (46.7% ),whereas androgynous women have not any sexual dissatisfaction, but in male, their sex-types were unrelated to their sexual satisfaction. Discussion The findings of this study suggest similarities between female and male sexuality. It seems that differences are greatly de