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Cross-cultural empirical research testing evolutionary perspectives and human universals are important. There is considerable variation in women’s rights, traditional gender roles, and political influence across different societies. Competing theories provide different explanations and predictions for sex differences observed in humans. Social role theory explicitly predicts a reduction in sex differences in more gender egalitarian societies due to societal influence on gender roles, whereas sexual strategies theory, although not being dismissive of cultural influence or effects of local ecological factors, predicts more stable sex differences based on parental investment theory and women and men have faced different adaptive problems throughout evolutionary history. Here we present more than a decade of empirical research from Norway, one of the most egalitarian societies in the world. We find no support for consistently smaller sex differences in samples from Norway in interest in sexual variation, sociosexuality, partner preferences, reasons for sex, sexual initiative and response, sexual over- and underperception, sexual regret and postcoital emotions, jealousy responses, or derogation and self-promotion. We conclude from these many studies that empirical predictions from social role theory are not supported. In contrast, the strong pervasiveness of sex differences across sexually egalitarian cultures supports predictions from sexual strategies theory.

Sex differences in jealousy responses to sexual and emotional infidelity are robust in samples of heterosexual adults, especially in more gender egalitarian nations. However, investigations of when and how these differences develop have been scant. We applied two forced choice infidelity scenarios in a large community sample of high school students (age 16–19, N = 1266). In line with previous findings on adults using the forced choice paradigm, adolescent males found the sexual aspect of imagined infidelity more distressing than adolescent females did. Nevertheless, there was no effect of age on the jealousy responses, and age did not moderate the sex difference. There were neither any effects of three covariates (having had first sexual intercourse, being in a committed romantic relationship, and sociosexuality), neither as markers of pubertal maturation nor as psychosocial environmental stimuli. Future research needs to investigate even younger samples in order to specify at what age the sex difference in jealousy responses emerges.

The #MeToo movement has to a large degree addressed a specific type of sexual harassment, focusing on quid pro quo over hostile environment type sexual harassment. Prototypical #MeToo features include male over female actor; superior over subordinate actor; repeated over single case harassment; private over public settings; personal over general targets and sexualized over non-sexualized physical contact. We predict that these prototypical #MeToo features that gained attention during the campaign will increase peoples’ perception of which social-sexual behaviors are considered to be sexual harassment. Predictions were tested in a sample of 489 Norwegian participants (66% women). The results suggest that men tend to rate female actions as less harassing than male actions, while women did not make such a difference. We also observed a bias toward prototypical types of sexual harassment, as people perceive these more as sexual harassment compared to less prototypical but equally harmful types. Implications for future research on, and prevention of, sexual harassment are discussed.

In this study we examined how people perceive social-sexual behavior of women and men, and how these perceptions were associated with beliefs about the outcomes of the #MeToo movement, sexism, traditional values, and gender equality. In addition, we examined the effect of having experienced sexual harassment on such perceptions. Analyses were performed on a Norwegian snowball social media sample covering 321 women and 168 men, aged 18-59 (M = 33.1). Outcome variables covered perceptions of scenarios that described opposite-sex social-sexual behaviors performed by female and male actors within the workplace environment. Path analysis showed that negative beliefs about the outcomes of the #MeToo movement was the principal predictor for perception of female and male social-sexual behavior as sexual harassment for women and men participants. Traditional values, gender equality, and hostile sexism toward women were all associated with perception of social-sexual behavior as sexual harassment, however the effects of these variables were only indirect and fully accounted for by the effect of negative #MeToo beliefs. For women, having experienced sexual harassment was associated with hostile sexism toward men, but had no effect on the perceptions over and above the effect of the other variables in the model. The predictors on participants' perceptions were highly similar for women and men and for evaluations of female and male actors. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.