What is behind the societal standards and/or stereotypes behind virginity?

As title states. What's your take?

Someone's comment on the 30 year old virgin post launched me into a mini-epiphany and I thought some other perspectives would be really neat to see.

It dawned on me that a large part of the push behind up selling virginity in women back in the day was the lack of contraceptives available, and inequality in the workforce. If a woman was giving away "the goods" without a contract, the woman had a much higher probability of failing in life. Generally speaking, women were unable to provide for themselves financially, thus making a husband a requirement. So, essentially, sex was the reward that had to be dangled in order to secure a woman's future.

A woman with a damaged body and/or child in tow would be a lot more challenging to marry off, which was considered the focal point of a woman's life for a very long time. Also, parents didn't want/couldn't afford potential grand babies that they would need to support. All of those things, and I'm sure many more that I'm missing, led parents to drill it into their daughter's heads to not have sex before marriage.

Is the current interest around virginity primarily residual?