Sexological research reports about lack of desire, arousal- and orgasm difficulties as an increasing and highly debated subject of significant relevance to women. From a history of mentality perspective this study aims to enlighten how cultural tellings about womanliness affect women's way of thinking and experiencing sexuality and sexual shame. We will elucidate how women experience their sexuality being affected by the sociocultural norms if they seek to comply with the sexual standards and ideals. Moreso how these narratives about womanliness are triggering shameful feelings and devaluing of the self.
Data is collected through semistructured interviews from a phenomenological standpoint. There has been conducted six interviews with women of various age range. The result is divided in three themes. Processing of empirical data have been by opinion condensation and hermeneutical principals following discussions of the findings with relevant theory and societal concepts from research literature of quantitative and qualita-tive nature.
The thesis concludes that sociocultural shame tends to highly affect women's sexual latitude and their capability of handling sexual difficulties.
Future research could advantageously have a more thorough concentration of the profound internalized cultural factors. If we, as upcoming sexologists, are imposed to take these matters seriously and thereby acknowledge the complexity of sexuality, the cultural factors must be juxtaposed with biological, psychological and social factors.