Can Prior Sexual Abuse Explain Global Differences in Measured Self-Esteem in Male and Female Adolescents?

World research has shown that adolescent and young adult women and girls have significantly “poorer” self-esteem than men and boys, on a variety of previously validated self-esteem measures. There is no consensus on reasons for this, and a variety of factors have been proposed: some adolescent girls have a preoccupation with facial and body features, and this leads to a global negative evaluation of self-characteristics; the measures themselves are biased towards describing self-characteristics on which men and boys are likely to evaluate themselves more favourably; and in an often-sexist world, women and girls experience (or anticipate) many structural disadvantages, in education, career and promotion, which lead girls to “internalise” an image of themselves as less able or worthy than men and boys. A separate literature on the sexual abuse and exploitation of children and adolescents has found that (a) sexual exploitation and maltreatment often has a sequel in impaired self-concept and self-esteem and (b) sexual maltreatment is twice as likely to occur in women and girls. It is puzzling that differential levels of child sexual abuse have not been advanced in many studies as an explanation of gender differences in self-esteem in the large-scale studies we review, although this effect is confirmed by clinical and social work literature.