“Benevolent sexism assumes female passivity and romanticises the belief that women should be reliant on men,” explain the study’s authors. “In this way, benevolent sexism is argued to be a form of legitimising myth, whereby prejudicial attitudes towards women are justified through the guise of care and protection.”

Crucially, both men and women can subscribe to hostile and/or benevolent sexist beliefs, sometimes without even realising it (if you’re interested as to how your beliefs score, you can check it out here).

After determining the extent to which each woman held benevolent sexist beliefs, the researchers asked them to rate a series of statements – on a scale of “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” – to measure their level of “perceived male sexual selfishness”. Statements included “During sex, men only care about their own pleasure” and “Men care more about ‘getting off’ than whether their partner has an orgasm”.

The women also told the researchers about their orgasms: both how they had them – whether through penetration, oral sex, or manual stimulation – and how frequently.

How sexism could be ruining your sex life