The "Orgasm Gap"
Has it closed at all in the last 30 years?
I’m a sucker for a good rabbit hole, and when Catherine Pearson, journalist for the New York Times, asked me if the “orgasm gap” had closed at all over the years that science has been asking people about their orgasms, I DOVE RIGHT THE FUCK IN.
tl;dr: Has the “orgasm gap” closed at all over the last 30 years? Yes, a bit.
A little bit of context, and then some history:
Context: As a sex educator, I do not care much about “the orgasm gap.” I find it intellectually interesting but unhelpful in my work for two reasons: (1) It’s a description of a population-level dynamic, and I’m here to help individuals and relationships, and (2) It uses orgasm as a proxy for sexual…. Justice? Equality? Fairness? Pleasure? It’s unclear, but orgasm isn’t any of those things; it’s just the spontaneous, involuntary release of physical tension generated in response to sex-related stimulation. So who cares?
Turns out a lot of people care, actually.
History: The first use of the term “orgasm gap” that I could find is a 1997 book called Are We Having Fun Yet? The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Sex, by Marcia Douglass, sociologist, and Lisa Douglass, anthropologist. (Love the title, hate that subtitle). That was followed rapidly by its use in 1999’s The BUST Guide to the New Girl Order and another name-drop in 2000’s Her Way: Young women remake the sexual revolution, by Paula Kamen. The gap was explained as approximately 45 percentage points, as reported in Laumann et al’s 1994 National Health and Social Life Survey, which is broadly accurate (bigger gap for younger people, smaller gap for older people), and all deplored the gap as A Very Bad Thing.
According to Google Scholar, the phrase’s first appearance in peer reviewed literature was authored by the inimitable Lisa Wade, et al, whose “The incidental orgasm: The presence of clitoral knowledge and the absence of orgasm for women” was published in 2005, and it cut right to the academic, sex positive (which is to say, inclusive and non-prescriptive) chase: “We do not propose an ideal rate of orgasm for women or that the gap between men and women naturally is or morally should be closed.” Bless their cotton socks.
Let’s pause to highlight that the entrance of the phrase “orgasm gap” into the academic domain brought with it the neutralization of the term—it’s a phenomenon that exists, but not something that’s morally good or bad. That neutrality does not seem to have made it out of academia, as media coverage of the gap consistently frames it as Very Bad Thing, lo these two decades later.
What Wade et al. found, in short, is that just because a woman knows all about the clitoris and can give herself orgasms by stimulating it herself does not mean that translates to orgasms with partners, because: patriarchy—specifically the patriarchal norm that men’s orgasms are essential to partner sex and women’s are nice but not necessary. Which is more or less what Douglass and Douglass wrote in 1997.
Over the last 20 years, that has remained the story, over and over again. The cultural narrative has persisted like a stubborn stain: His orgasm is necessary and indeed marks the end of sex; women take too long; if she doesn’t come from penetrative sex, that’s her problem—but also it’s her responsibility because his ego demands her orgasm.
And it’s not just men who believe and perpetuate these ideas; the Canadian qualitative study that found that some women who don’t orgasm with their partners self-report that they don’t like the kinds of sex that are more likely to give them orgasms, such as oral sex and using vibrators. Why don’t they like these kinds of sex? It’s not part of what “normal” sex is or should be.
As the narrative remains the same, the gap appears to be closing. The Canadian study found an overall gap of 24 percentage points (86% of men and 62% of women reporting orgasm in their most recent sexual encounter), with the fewest women reporting orgasm if they did not receive oral sex (57% versus 73% of women, creating gaps of 29 percentage points and 13 points). A 2020 review of the research (PDF) reported gaps of 27 percentage points (91% of men, 64% of women reporting orgasm during most recent partnered sexual event), 24 points (86% of men and 62% of women reporting orgasm during sex with a familiar partner). Another recent study, this one of younger (average age about 19) cishet people, found 45% of women (and 83% of men) reported orgasm in a familiar context (a gap of 38 percentage points), compared with 14% of women and 69% of men in a new context (a gap of 55 percentage points). (This “familiar context/partner” situation is a big deal, not just for the gap but also for overall orgasmicity. The 2020 review reported a study that found 31% of men and 10% of women orgasmed during a first-time hookup (21 point gap) versus 85% of men and 68% of women (17 point gap) orgasmed during their most recent sexual experience with a committed partner. This has been found in the research as far back as the Kinsey Reports (see for example Figures 70 and 71 of the female volume.) The study of single adults of all ages that prompted this whole newsletter found gender orgasm gaps ranging from 25 points to 52 points, depending on age and sexual orientation.
(It’s a whole, complicated question, what “orgasm gap” means for people who mostly have sex with people of the same gender, when the gap is, by definition, a gap between men and women having sex with each other? Regardless, there’s a whole rant in Come Together about how women who have sex with women have higher quality sex, including but not limited to more orgasms, if you’re interested.)
So. If forced to give a number, I’d say the heterosexual orgasm gap is somewhere around 25-35 points, which is narrower than it was in 1994. The gap remains widest among younger heterosexuals who have less experience with a given partner and don’t do cunnilingus, among other pretty predictable contextual factors. The gap is smaller among people with more experience and, ya know, less misogyny.
That Canadian study also provides what we might think of as a “benchmark gap” of orgasm during masturbation—75% for women, 82% for men, a gap of 7 percentage points. That’s a measure of what happens without the complication of a male partner being currently present in the sexual encounter—though it’s not a measure of what happens without the complication of the person being raised in a patriarchal misogynist culture that taught her that her pleasure is a side quest, not the main adventure.
The way to close the orgasm gap both simple and deeply complex, right? All you have to do is prioritize women’s pleasure, in particular by increasing non-penetrative sex and increasing attention to the context and to the clitoris. HAHAHA “ALL YOU HAVE TO DO.”
Simple and obvious, sure, but if it were easy all heterosexual type couples would already be doing it. The deeply complex part is the dismantling of patriarchal, misogynist ideas about women’s pleasure that are the primary barrier to prioritizing women’s pleasure and paying attention to context and the clitoris. Dismantling at the cultural level, yes, but more immediately people need to dismantle it from their own understanding of their sexuality.
(There’s a reason I spend two chapters on the gender binary in Come Together.)
But again, orgasm isn’t a measure of anything in particular. It’s an arbitrary phenomenon chosen by sociologists, journalists, and feminists to measure… something that it doesn’t really measure. Orgasm is only as important as you decide it is for you and your sexuality.
To conclude, let me complicate that with a little more history:
Whenever I’m asked how women’s sexuality has changed over time, I turn to the Hite Report. It was first published in 1976, yet it very often says the same thing I find myself saying to journalists. Look at just the boldface summaries:
Page 58: “Women are now under great pressure to perform by having orgasms, especially during intercourse.”
Page 59: There is also a social pressure that says a woman who has an orgasm is more of a woman, a “real” woman.
Page 60: A few women reacted strongly against this pressure to perform. […] On the other hand, not having an orgasm with a man could be frustrating too, because you could find up feeling left out and cheated and watching him have his.
P 62: Sometimes women focused on the man’s orgasm as a surrogate for their own. […] Some women came to the conclusion that orgasm during sex was not important.
Of this last group, Hite writes, “In a sense these women were right: to experience sex as a race for orgasm is a narrow and unimaginative view. However, most women are not speaking from a position of strength in this regard. We are not always having orgasms (or able to have orgasms) during sex, and then saying they are not important. “
Can women freely say that orgasm isn’t important to them, before we live in a world where they have access to all the orgasms they want? I don’t know. But I’m on board with working toward that world and finding out not just how many women decide orgasm is or isn’t a priority for them, but how many people of all genders say that orgasm is or isn’t a priority. Could it be that we’re really moving toward a world where people let go of orgasm and replace it with pleasure in all its varieties?
A sex educator can hope.
PS: But only if you all consider voting, if you’re eligible in the U.S. Pretty soon I’ll be writing a little something on Project 2025, but here are some links in the meantime:
Ms. Magazine covers some of the truly unhinged language about marriage and gender
GLAAD summarizes even more of the dangerous plans around gender, sexual orientation, and birth control. 🚨 YES THEY ARE COMING FOR BIRTH CONTROL. 🚨
Dani Faith Leonard’s Adult Sex Ed newsletter about the “p*rn” definition
Dasia Sade’s 27 minute YouTube video about it. And also this follow up.
Questions or comments? Please email my very tiny team at unrulywellness@gmail.com
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This is a possible boring explanation for the gap from a boring guy, but I wonder how much could be do to most men sexually shutting down after any orgasm. A woman who’s gotten off can go on to get off her partner while still having fun, but the reverse is much less true
Hi,
As a fan of the writer Emily Nagoski ;), I wonder if you reframed this as The "Pleasure Gap" does it change any feelings or any ideas around it? If we measured the "gap" by how often the woman's pleasure is centered and felt vs. centering orgasm/pleasure from a penis?