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All the Single Ladies - Kate Bolick - The Atlantic

Whether the sexual double standard is cultural or biological, it's finding traction in the increasingly lopsided sexual marketplace that is the American college campus, where women outnumber men, 57 percent to 43 percent. In 2010, The New York Times ran a much-discussed article chronicling this phenomenon. "If a guy is not getting what he wants, he can quickly and abruptly go to the next one, because there are so many of us," a University of Georgia co-ed told The Times, reporting that at college parties and bars, she will often see two guys being fawned over by six provocatively dressed women. The alternative is just to give up on dating and romance because "there are no guys," as a University of North Carolina student put it.

Last year, a former management consultant named Susan Walsh tried to dig a little deeper. She applied what economists call the Pareto principle--the idea that for many events, roughly 20 percent of the causes create 80 percent of the effects--to the college dating market, and concluded that only 20 percent of the men (those considered to have the highest status) are having 80 percent of the sex, with only 20 percent of the women (those with the greatest sexual willingness); the remaining 80 percent, male and female, sit out the hookup dance altogether. (Surprisingly, a 2007 study commissioned by the Justice Department suggested that male virgins outnumber female virgins on campus.) As Walsh puts it, most of the leftover men are "have nots" in terms of access to sex, and most of the women--both those who are hooking up and those who are not--are "have nots" in terms of access to male attention that leads to commitment. (Of course, plenty of women are perfectly happy with casual, no-strings sex, but they are generally considered to be in the minority.) Yet the myth of everyone having sex all the time is so pervasive that it's assumed to be true, which distorts how young men and women relate. "I think the 80/20 principle is the key to understanding the situation we find ourselves in--one in which casual sex is the cultural norm, despite the fact that most people would actually prefer something quite different," Walsh told me.