This study examines the impacts of autonomy of dating and engagement on premarital sex among women in Taiwan, utilising a life- course analysis of data from a 1986 island-wide survey. The sample size was approximately 5,000 and the response rate was 86 per cent. Age- specific and cross-sectional analyses show that the transformation of marital arrangements from arranged marriage toward love match, accompanied with a newly developed dating culture and broader perceptions regarding the process of getting engaged and getting married, can explain why the observed increase in, so-called, 'premarital sex' was in fact most likely to occur within a marital context for women in Taiwan.
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