Hello dear LWMA, I wanted to present you a study by David DiMarco which measured sexual coercion rates of men and compared those to rates of women, and which conclusions we can get out of this.

The following paper analysed 60 studies about sexual coercion of heterosexual men and non-heterosexual men (26,717 men). They later also measured Vicitimazation Rates and compared them.

Paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374715014_Rates_of_Male_Sexual_Coercion_Comparison_with_Female_Rates_and_Comparison_Between_Sexual_Orientations

Findings:

29.8% of heterosexual men reported having sexually coerced a woman.

27.3% of non-heterosexual men reported having sexually coerced a person.

Now, DiMarco also compared those numbers with studies that measured sexual coercion by women, which found the following:

17.3% of heterosexual women reported having sexually coerced a man.

26.3% of non-heterosexual women reported having sexually coerced a person.

So the one rate that sticks out is the heterosexual women one. Why is that?

Now, they also compared, in the discussion, the victimization rates of studies (24 studies for perpetration and 18 for victimization) that reported both male and female victimization and perpetration.

They found the following:

Male victimization rate of 33.5%

Female victimization rate of 44.8%

Male perpetration rate of 27%

Female perpetration rate of 16.7%

So, in relative terms, men’s victimization rate is 74.8% of women’s rate, but the female perpetration rate is only 61.9% of men’s rate, thus leaving a gap of 13% between the two.

DiMarco argues that this difference could come from the underreporting by heterosexual women of sexual coercion of men, as there could be a stereotype that men always want sex, and therefore more women do not realize they sexually coerced a man.
This could also explain why the coercion rate of non-heterosexual women is so much higher than that of heterosexual women.

Nonetheless, we can say that at the very least men make up 43% of victims of sexual coercion, and women make up at least 38% of perpetrators of sexual coercion.

So there might be a gender difference, but it is at best marginal and doesn’t really impact women’s and men’s risk assessment.

Men are almost at the same risk in entering a relationship as women when it comes to being sexually coerced at some point.