Women cheat as much as men

The argument

Women and men both cheat, and this argument holds that treating infidelity as a gender issue is misleading. The framing of the question — why men cheat on women — presupposes a difference in conduct that the evidence, on this account, does not support: in recent years the infidelity gender gap has been closing. What predicts cheating, the argument holds, is not gender. Studies show that how likely a man or woman is to cheat depends on innumerable extraneous factors rather than on which sex they belong to. If the variation within each group is produced by circumstance, relationship and opportunity, then sorting people by gender sorts them by the wrong variable, and any average difference between the two groups is a by-product of those other factors rather than an explanation in its own right. The one gendered trend sociologists have noticed concerns ageing and cheating, and even that, on this argument, concludes that men and women cheat equally. The pattern runs in different directions at different stages of life. A 2017 study by the US Institute for Family Studies found that younger married women are more likely to cheat than married men in the same age group; conversely, rates rise for men as they get older, with a purported 24% of men in their 80s cheating on their wives. Taken across a lifetime, neither sex emerges as the unfaithful one — which is what the appearance of a gender difference at any single age conceals. Looking at this complex issue as a function of gender therefore leads to false inferences. Since women are also complicit and actively cheat on their partners, the argument concludes the problem must hinge on other, more intangible factors than the gender of the person doing it.

Context

As cheating is not gender-specific, this cannot be a gender issue.

Premises

Counter-arguments

It is impossible not to look at infidelity within heterosexual couples, without a nod to gender disparities and dynamics. Digging deeper into studies that claim to prove gender is irrelevant reveal evidence to the contrary. For example, asking why younger married women and older married men are more likely to cheat, links back to wider patriarchal structures. If men naturally find younger women more attractive, and we are conditioned to "not see" older women, these conclusions indicate sexism at play.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Converging headline rates do not show that gender has dropped out of the explanation; the counter holds that the pattern beneath the totals is itself gendered, since the finding that younger married women and older married men are the more likely to stray describes a structure rather than a coincidence. [Rejecting P2] The residual factors are not independent of gender in the way the premise requires: proponents of the counter argue that the age asymmetry tracks conditioned norms about which partners are treated as desirable at which ages, so the variables offered as gender-neutral carry gendered content.