A significantly higher number of males [93%] than females [85%] thought that women have a right to negotiate for sex. These findings were quite perplexing given that the assumption would be that women should know that they have a right to negotiate for sex. However, this could be explained by the assumption that women perceive having a right that one cannot effectively exercise as the equivalent of not having that right in the first place. This is reflected in that a significantly lower number of women [64%] as compared to that of men [72%] thought it was possible for women to actually exercise the right to negotiate for sex. This finding, of the low probability of women’s ability to negotiate for sex, fell square within findings of pre-existing research which explains that; the lived reality of women’s lives is that they mostly cannot exercise the right to negotiate for sex. Mungweni 26 argues that the ability of married Zimbabwean women to negotiate for safer sex is reduced by their inferior social, economic, legal, and political status, which makes them dependant on their male counterparts, and hence reduces their negotiating power. Referring to women’s negotiation skills in the employment sector, Babcock and Laschever27 argue that the problem with women is not that they achieve lower outcomes when they negotiate, but rather that women do not negotiate as frequently as they should because they do not know when negotiation is possible. Furthermore, they do know when not to be afraid to negotiate assuming that society will react badly to a woman asserting her own needs. This assertion also rings true when it comes to women’s ability to negotiate for sex where women think negotiation is impossible or are afraid to try given their socialisation. This socialisation suggests that a woman cannot refuse sexual advances, particularly if she is married to the man in question. Given that the majority of the women in this study were married, this could possibly explain why most of them also thought that negotiating for sex is not possible. It has also been argued that the commercialisation of lobola/bride price aggravates married women’s inability to negotiate for sex given that men believe they “purchase” conjugal rights when they pay large sums of lobola and so the right to demand for sex -as and when the men need it -comes with the territory.28 Thus it is interesting that both the tertiary educated respondents and those with lower levels of education understood that women have a right to negotiate for sex. However, a lesser number of those without tertiary education [67%] than those with tertiary education [73%] believed that it is possible for women to exercise this right. Although age did not seem to generally affect the belief that women have a right to negotiate for sex, a significant number of those below 30 [9%] said women have no rights as compared to those above 30 years of age [7%]. This is possibly explained by the fact that a higher number of those below 30 [31%] also went further to say that women could not exercise their rights to negotiate for or against sex than those above 30[24%]. It appears they read the inability to negotiate for sex to mean the same as the absence of that right. As regards class, the majority of the respondents, across class divides believed that women have a right to negotiate for sex. However, more persons in the middle class than in the working class showed that they did not agree to women having the right to negotiate for sex. This also reflected in the responses to the question of whether women could actually exercise this right, with more people in the middle class indicating that they were unable to exercise their sexual rights than in the working class 4.1.5 Male Rape 26 E. Nyamutsambah Mugweni, (2008) ‘Empowering married Zimbabwean women to negotiate for safer sex’ AIDS 2008 - XVII International AIDS Conference: Abstract no. WEPE0331. 27 L. Babcock and S Laschever, (2003) “Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 28 R. Dube (2012) ‘Sold to the Highest Bidder: The role of Lobola in Modern Zimbabwe” Report Produced by the Research and Advocacy Unit, April 2012.