ABSTRACT
The regulation and supervision of the access of young people to sex have always been considered critical issues. The timing and conditions of sexual initiation in developed societies have followed secular trends that are related to the overall social and cultural transformations that have taken place in recent decades. In this chapter, the authors were able to include the data of Great Britain and two additional countries where mail surveys on sexual behaviour and HIV risk were organized, namely, Denmark and Iceland. The reduction in age at sexual initiation that occurred over the second half of the twentieth century was more marked for women than for men. The gap between the ages of men and women at sexual initiation and changes therein over the past century are powerful indicators of how gender and sexual behaviour interrelate in the different countries. In the younger generations, men and women do not start their sex lives with the same type of partner.
