Examining the orgasm gap: Why are so many women missing out?

Exploring the Orgasm Gap: Why Do Many Women Miss Out?

The gender disparity isn’t confined to the boardroom; it extends into the bedroom as well. Why are so many women not experiencing orgasms? A new book delves into this issue and seeks to address it. Hannah Betts reports.

For many, the steamy scenes from Bridgerton, where the hot duke initiates a tremulous virgin into sex, have been a highlight. Thanks to his expert guidance, we’re all now familiar with how women achieve pleasure. Everyone seems to instinctively know how to arouse each other and engage in instant multiple orgasms. Elsewhere, good-time girls mount young bucks at boxing matches, with both climaxing mutually and ecstatically after seven seconds.

If only life—specifically our sex lives—were this straightforward. Instead, as Dutch journalist Laura Hiddinga makes clear in her new book, Are You Coming? A Vagina Owner’s Guide to Orgasm, heterosexual women are consistently short-changed. According to a report published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2016, only 65% of straight women achieve orgasm during sex, compared to 95% of men. Other studies put this female pleasure rating as low as 35%. Meanwhile, 10-15% experience anorgasmia, meaning they have never achieved climax, or used to but no longer do. Compare this with the 86% of lesbians who report orgasming during sex, and it’s clear that the heterosexual world has a problem.

Society’s Orgasm Gap

Society has an orgasm gap, and all of us should mind it. Fundamentally, the problem is that we’re continuing to have procreative-style sex for recreational purposes. As Laura tells me, “Female pleasure is all about the clitoris. Most women (80%) cannot achieve orgasm through penetration alone. Traditional sex focuses on penetrative sex and the male orgasm. That’s the goal. We’ve been told that a man needs to climax or he’ll experience ‘blue balls,’ while a woman’s orgasm is difficult and not necessary. This is a cultural, not biological, issue. We wouldn’t have an orgasm gap if the clitoris wasn’t ignored.”

Laura is a journalist for LotteLust, an online magazine for women who want to learn about sexuality and fantasize. She lives in the Netherlands—a country regarded as having the world’s most progressive sexual attitudes. Laura’s indignation was sparked by that 2016 report. From her work with LotteLust, she also knew that lack of sexual satisfaction was the most pressing issue for her readers. And so, the idea for her book was born: her mission was to rescue female pleasure through 200 pages of facts, anatomy lessons, cataloging the 13 forms of orgasm, and tips on positions and sex toys.

Knowledge and Communication

“Knowledge is power,” she asserts. “To close the orgasm gap, women—and men—need first to know about it, then talk it through. Ask yourself why there is a difference in expectation? It’s too simple to say it’s the man’s fault. He can’t read your mind. As a woman, you need to explore what makes you come, solo and/or with your partner. It’s important to communicate this.”

When her manual came out in the Netherlands in 2019, it made the orgasm gap part of the national conversation. Now Laura hopes for a similar response around the world, to tackle inequality in its most fundamental form.

Orgasmic Equality

“Orgasmic equality is feminism’s final frontier,” she says. “Women have been trying to change society’s view about their sexuality and bodies for decades. However, feminism has necessarily been about sexism and sociological differences. Meanwhile, in the bedroom, men and women are not equal. Sex for straight couples has always been so much about what the man wants.”

Historically speaking, the female orgasm has been not so much elusive as ignored, or “suppressed for centuries,” as Laura puts it. The clitoris, on which it largely depends, is an organ, the visible portion of which—the glans—sits at the front of the inner lips of the vulva, above the opening of the urethra. Although roughly the size of a pea, it is estimated to have about 8000 sensory nerves, double that of the penis, with which it shares corresponding structures. And unlike the penis, the clitoris’s sole function is pleasure, leading to the traditional misogynistic belief that women are insatiable, their sexuality needing to be controlled.