Changes in Sexual Identity Labels in a Contemporary Cohort of Emerging Adult Women: Patterns, Prevalence and a Typology

ABSTRACT

Sexual attraction, behavior and identity are subject to change across the life course for some individuals, and certain developmental periods such as emerging adulthood appear particularly conducive to this. However, the evidence documenting these phenomena comes overwhelmingly from data collected 10–20 years ago. In the brief interlude since, the socio-political context has changed markedly and increasing numbers of women are reporting non-heterosexuality. Drawing on contemporary data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (n = 16,870), we provide up to date evidence on changes in sexual identity labels among emerging adult women. We found that 19% of women changed their sexual identity label from one survey wave to the next, and 30.6% changed their identity label at least once across the four waves. Mostly heterosexual and bisexual labels were both more common and more stable in our sample than in previous studies. We propose a new typology of sexual identity sequences and fit this to our data, providing a blueprint for researchers looking to define sexual minority status longitudinally. Findings suggest that the ways women perceive and label their sexual orientation should be treated as dynamic phenomena situated within the nested temporalities of biographical and historical time.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Walter Forrest for helpful comments on the manuscript. The research on which this paper is based was conducted as part of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health by the University of Queensland and the University of Newcastle. We are grateful to the Australian Government Department of Health for funding and to the women who provided the survey data.

Disclosure Statement

The authors state that they have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (CE140100027); and by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.