&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/71074?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=%27Bossy+women+have+less+sex%27%3A+not+proved+by+science++%7C+Sarah+Ditum%3AArticle%3A1647236&amp;ch=Comment+is+free&amp;c3=GU.co.uk&amp;c4=Gender+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CAfrica+%28News%29%2CSex+%28Life+%26+style%29%2CWomen+and+women%27s+interests%2CLife+and+style%2CHealth+%28Society%29%2CSociety%2CMedia%2CPress+and+publishing%2CScience%2CGlobal+development&amp;c5=Press+Media%2CSociety+Weekly%2CUnclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly%2CWomen%2CHealth+Society%2CFamily+and+Relationships&amp;c6=Sarah+Ditum&amp;c7=11-Oct-13&amp;c8=1647236&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=Comment&amp;c11=Comment+is+free&amp;c13=&amp;c25=Comment+is+free&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;standfirst&quot;&gt;Data on African women&#039;s decision-making has become journalistic fuel for western gender angst&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Journalism is a weird branch of alchemy sometimes. Information is lobbed in the fact cauldron, passes through several distillations of reporting, editing and commentary, and finally gets scraped from the bottom of a boiling flask in a mysterious powdery form that bears little or no relation to the original material. You start with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2011.554918&quot; title=&quot;Taylor Francis Online: Women&#039;s Autonomy and Timing of Most Recent Sexual Intercourse in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Multi-Country Analysis&quot;&gt;statistical analysis of the link between sub-Saharan African women&#039;s decision-making power and how frequently they have sex&lt;/a&gt;; you end up with two male writers debating whether bossy women are hot on &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencehastheanswer.blogspot.com/2011/10/no-grazie-grazia.html&quot; title=&quot;Happy Science blog: No Grazie, Grazia &quot;&gt;page 38 of Grazia&lt;/a&gt;, underneath a picture of Desperate Housewife and queen Wasp Bree Van de Kamp.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&#039;s quite the transformation. In the process, the African women at the centre of the original study are spirited away. Almost &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/news/world/531280/bossy-women-have-less-sex.html&quot; title=&quot;Marie Claire online: Bossy women have less sex&quot;&gt;every&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifestyle.aol.co.uk/2011/09/23/bossy-women-have-less-sex&quot; title=&quot;AOL Lifestyle: Bossy women have less sex&quot;&gt;single&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2040634/Desperate-housewives-Bossy-women-sex.html&quot; title=&quot;Mail Online: Too bossy to make love: Women who make all the decisions at home pay the price in passion  Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2040634/Desperate-housewives-Bossy-women-sex.html#ixzz1af37ZbjV &quot;&gt;version&lt;/a&gt; of the story that has appeared online since the press release circulating the results of the analysis is illustrated with a picture of a white couple in a bedroom from a shopping catalogue &ndash; including the article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://news1.ghananation.com/femail-stuff/218167-desperate-housewives-bossy-women-have-less-sex.html&quot; title=&quot;Ghana Nation: Desperate housewives: Bossy women &#039;have less sex&#039;&quot;&gt;Ghana Nation&lt;/a&gt;, although the Telegraph opted for a nice photo of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/relationships/8784546/Marriage-a-survey-of-surveys.html&quot; title=&quot;Telegraph: Marriage: a survey of surveys&quot;&gt;Kate Middleton&lt;/a&gt; (so incongruous, yet so very, very Telegraph).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The authors&#039; actual conclusions have disappeared, too. The study did find &quot;a strong relationship between women&#039;s decision-making autonomy and time since last sexual intercourse&quot; &ndash; but the definition of &quot;autonomy&quot; falls a long way short of &quot;bossiness&quot;. Women included in the survey were asked, for instance, whether they or their husband had the last say on the woman&#039;s healthcare, or when the wife could visit family and friends.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the UK, exercising those choices isn&#039;t the preserve of the henpecker &ndash; they&#039;re the bare minimum for a non-abusive relationship. That they&#039;re meaningful markers of self-determination for sub-Saharan African women ought to tell us something about the cultural differences involved, and why these findings can&#039;t be wilfully transplanted to other settings. And there&#039;s the fact that sexual norms in the countries involved mean intercourse often isn&#039;t a bucket of fun for the female partner. &quot;For some women,&quot; the authors note, &quot;sexual pleasure was the absence of pain.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Understanding how women&#039;s position in the household influences their sexual activity may be an essential piece in protecting the sexual rights of women and helping them to achieve a sexual life that is both safe and pleasurable,&quot; the study concludes. &quot;WHATEVER!&quot; hoots the mainstream coverage, &quot;We&#039;re going to use this to show those uppity broads that if they don&#039;t quit their nagging, no man will ever fancy them!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And so to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/berman/8049268-452/bossy-women-miss-out-in-the-bedroom.html&quot; title=&quot;Chicago Sun-Times: Bossy women miss out in the bedroom&quot;&gt;Laura Berman in the Chicago Sun-Times&lt;/a&gt; tersely counselling that when women make the bulk of the household decisions, they &quot;chip away at [the marital] bond and at [their husbands&#039;] masculinity&quot;. (She uses wet towels and food hygiene as examples of potential conflicts; no word on whether she thinks ladies can pop to the GP on their own and still be sexy.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It doesn&#039;t have to be like this, says Dr Petra Boynton, lecturer at UCL and sometime agony aunt: &quot;Another way to treat the study would be to use the finding of women having more autonomy in their relationship feeling more in control over their sex lives. That could extend to talking about what that might look like, how it might feel, and how women and their partners might enjoy this together.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What we got instead wasn&#039;t news, and it wasn&#039;t even useful information about sex &ndash; it was the obliteration of African women in the service of western gender angst. Bossiness has its fanciers (hey, there&#039;s that guy in Grazia, for a start), but excruciating self-involvement? That&#039;s never a turn-on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;related&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gender&quot;&gt;Gender&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa&quot;&gt;Africa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/sex&quot;&gt;Sex&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/women&quot;&gt;Women&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/health&quot;&gt;Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pressandpublishing&quot;&gt;Newspapers &amp; magazines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;author&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/sarah-ditum&quot;&gt;Sarah Ditum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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