Spanish women are the most flirtatious¹ in the world online, according to a survey by a dating website which said the results belie² lingering perceptions of a socially conservative country.

根据一家约会网站的调查，西班牙女性是全世界最会网上调情的女性。该网站称，这一结果颠覆了西班牙一直以来在人们心目中的保守印象。

Badoo.com found Spanish women are more likely to initiate³（开始，发起） Internet dating contact with a man than women from any other country in which the site operates.

Badoo, which boasts 80 million registered users across more than 240 countries said it studied 90 million contacts made over a month.

It showed that the average Spanish woman initiates⁴ 1.33 contacts with a man per month -- almost double the figure for women in either Britain (0.78) or France (0.69) and more than double that for women in the United States (0.63).

"First the (soccer) World Cup, now this," Badoo marketing⁵ director Lloyd Price said in a statement. "Another global win for Spain."

The league table ranking the 20 top countries on the number of contacts with a man initiated⁶ per month by the average woman put Poland second, followed by the Dominican Republic, Italy and Argentina. Latin countries (Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese-speaking) occupied eight of the top 10 places.

Men however were still far more likely to initiate contact in Spain and elsewhere.

British women ranked 14th in the list of Badoo's top 20 countries, while US women ranked second-last, just ahead of Ecuador.

John Hooper, British author of a book on modern-day Spain, said the results of the analysis may surprise those who have an outdated⁷（过时的） notion of a Spanish society which has changed dramatically since dictator Francisco Franco died 35 years ago.

"Until the mid-1970s, the status of women in Spain was lower than in any other European country, except Turkey. Spanish women couldn't open a bank account without their husband's permission," said Hooper, author of "The New Spaniards."

"Now, you have a country where the proportion of women directors on the boards of big companies is greater than in, for example, a northern European country like Belgium."

The survey's top 10:

1. Spain

2. Poland

3. Dominican Republic

4. Italy

5. Argentina

6. Brazil

7. Chile

8. Portugal

9. Canada

10. Venezuela