UK News 30-11-2001 `Sexual Revolution` Grips Britain who: British women what: Experiencing greatest sexual liberation since the Sixties, says report where: UK when: Yesterday snippet: "Women are experiencing a second sexual liberation, every bit as controversial as that of the Swinging Sixties," insists Sarah Boseley of the Guardian this morning, speaking not just for herself but for 11,000 people surveyed for a report to be published in the Lancet today. "Forty years after the pill set them free from the fear of unwanted pregnancy, a new generation are now changing sexual partners with a frequency that used to be thought the preserve only of men." Women have more sexual partners than ten years ago, explains the Times: "the publicly funded survey found that 14.6 per cent of women aged 16 to 24 have had ten or more partners. Among women aged between 25 and 34, that figure rises to 22.7 per cent. That is higher than the figure for women ten years older than them, the 35 to 44 age group, of which 19.4 per cent have had ten or more partners." On a rather less savoury note, BBC ONline points out that "the survey also found a sizeable number of people who have had concurrent relationships or have `two-timed` during the past year. Some 15% of men and 7% of women admitted to this." Another statistic also reflects rather unfavourably on the male sex:"the number of men paying for sex has doubled from one in 48 in 1990 to one in 23 last year," says Nicole Martin in the Independent. Anne Johnson, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at University College London, who led the research, said the findings showed that the country had become "a more tolerant and open society in terms of sex." She disclosed that the number of women who reported ever having a homosexual encounter almost tripled in a decade, from one in 56 in 1990 to one in 20 last year. For men, it rose from one in 28 to one in 19. The report, which will be used by the Department of Health as a basis for policy making, "also found that more people are using condoms during intercourse suggesting that the safe sex campaigns of the past decade have been effective," notes BBC Online. [... more]

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