Swedish schools teach sex education—but it only helps boys make decisions
A large national study finds that teenagers satisfied with school sexuality education are more likely to confidently initiate or refuse sex—yet this benefit applies only to boys, not girls. The finding suggests educators may need to redesign how they teach sexual decision-making to ensure curricula work equally across genders.
Originaltitel: School-based cross-curricular sexuality education and its association with sexual initiation, refusal, and gender in Sweden
Sexual initiation and refusal are key contributors to sexual health, but despite their importance there has been limited research on how sexual initiation and refusal are learned. Therefore, we explored associations between sexual initiation and refusal, and satisfaction with the reception of information from school-based cross-curricular sexuality education. For this we used empirical data from SRHR 2017 [Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights 2017], a nationally representative dataset in Sweden. The findings revealed a positive relationship between satisfaction with school-based cross-curricular sexuality education and sexual refusal and initiation for men, but not women. The strongest association between satisfaction with school-based cross-curricular sexuality education and perceived sexual initiation and refusal was found among men who were satisfied with their education. The main strengths of our analysis are the unusually high statistical power of the analyses, the use of randomised data, and inclusion of sub-groups that have rarely been included in earlier research.