Truth about female orgasms finally revealed in new study

News.com.au

06-05-2025

If this was a newspaper and not a nice shiny website plugged into the wall with a few blue cables coming out the back, then there is only one headline we would use on this story: Come again?
Today we have new research out of the US where some academics have dedicated themselves to the burning question: Why aren't women having more orgasms?
Sadly, big tech, big pharma and big porn, despite being industries worth a combined $21 trillion, have failed to solve this.
Enter a new study that has some answers. Published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, this research has identified what is really going wrong in the bedroom - we are suffering from an Orgasm Pursuit Gap (OGP). That is, how much perceived effort, both partners, put into a woman orgasming.
The study found that, essentially, straight men and women both prioritise the bloke getting there (sly wink) and that far less effort, on everyone's part, went into the woman achieving similar results.
Sigh. Great. Just great.
We (writing as a cis gender woman) are, statistically, paid less, do more housework and childcare, report higher rates of feeling rushed and pressed for time, and are more likely to die of stroke.
And now, it turns out that we are being even further short-changed in the bedroom. Who do we ask for a refund?
The study was led by Carly Wolfer, a doctoral candidate in social psychology at City University of New York, who asked 127 people in heterosexual relationships aged 18-40-years-old to keep sex diaries for three weeks, a span which ultimately tracked 566 sexual events.
Ms Wolfer found that men orgasmed during 90 percent of their sexual encounters while women only got to the same place just over half the time, at 54 percent.
It gets worse. Not only are men 15 times more likely to orgasm than women but when they do they have more satisfying orgasms.
(Programming note: I vehemently refuse to use the word 'climax'. We are not trapped in the early aughties badlands of mags doing stories like '15 ways to blow his mind'.)
That's 'not because it's 'just naturally harder' for women to orgasm - a common myth,' Wilder told the HuffPost, 'but because we put less effort into the sexual practices that support women's pleasure, like clitoral stimulation.'
Or to put it another way, heterosexual couples have a general tendency to do the things, positions, and upside-down, back-to-front, standing-on-your-head gymnastics that help men orgasm over what works for women.
Moreover, while this is going on, the research showed that both him and her are more focused on the guy orgasming, rather than the gal equally.
Et voila, the orgasm pursuit gap.
As Wolfer explained to the HuffPost, the OGP is about 'how much someone wants an orgasm to happen - whether it's their own or their partner's - and how much effort they put into making it happen.'
From a feminist standpoint this all makes me want to grind my teeth and start emitting the sort of noises better suited to a pitbull chained up to a fence who is having a very bad day.
When it comes to female sexual enjoyment, the figures are a real turn off.
Last year the sex toy company Womanizer's We-Vibe sex and relationships study found that barely 40 per cent of women across all age brackets are actually satisfied with the amount of sex they are having.
Meanwhile, an Australian study has previously found that only one in four women regularly masturbate, dealing a devastating blow to double AA battery sales. Overall, researchers found that in the past year, nearly three quarters (72 per cent) of men had masturbated but only just a bit more than one in three women (42 per cent).
According to Womanizer's numbers, overall, 62 per cent of women don't own a single sex toy.
So women of Australia it's time to unite: We are being shortchanged, and short changing ourselves, in the bedroom.
Forget budget deficits, we are massively stuck in a far more pressing orgasm deficit, strangely an issue that has not come up during this election cycle. (Imagining Prime Minister Athony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton even spluttering their way through saying the word 'orgams' as they turned various shades of puce and became increasingly flustered is the best fun you can have with your pants on today. No one should ever lie back and think of Canberra.)
The moral of all this: When it comes to your next sexual event, everyone needs to try.
Everyone needs to come to the party.