Have you ever heard the joke that sex for women is like a song where it keeps building up but the beat never drops? As it turns out, there is actually some scientific merit behind this joke.
It is called the orgasm gap, and it is a “really well-established finding that cisgender men tend to have substantially more orgasms than cisgender women during partnered sex,” says Grace Wetzel, a TEDx speaker and social psychology Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University who specializes in the orgasm gap, how it tends to be seen as a biological certainty (though this is untrue), and how the public perceives it generally. She found her niche in starting those taboo conversations about sex and pleasure and translated this interest into research on the understudied orgasm gap.

“Men tend to experience orgasm around 90% of the time while women tend to experience orgasm around 65% of the time. That’s the standard size of the orgasm gap, but it can get bigger or smaller depending on other elements of the sexual context,” Wetzel claims.

What causes the orgasm gap?

One of the biggest drivers of the orgasm gap is unfamiliarity between partners. That’s to say, women’s rate of orgasm can be significantly lower during hookups and casual sex encounters [1,2]. Despite this, the orgasm gap only closes to an extent in long-term relationships, and even couples who have been together for years still experience differences in pleasure [3]. According to Wetzel, both men and women come to expect that sex will end with a man’s orgasm, so when women are not expecting pleasure, they are less inclined to pursue it.

The main problem here is that men feel more entitled to orgasms than women. In our society, “sex and men’s orgasms are synonymous. They are the expected result of sex, whereas women’s orgasms are often seen as a bonus. So, we need to reorganize heterosexual sex to be about mutual pleasure in whatever form that takes rather than having the sole focus on intercourse,” Wetzel says. According to her, there are scripts for what sex should look like that often place men’s pleasure over women’s by making orgasm the sole objective of sex. Wetzel’s solution to this is to look at sex more holistically and view intercourse as one of many valuable sexual acts, where orgasm does not always have to be the end all be all.

What do people think about the orgasm gap?

However, people place the blame on many other driving forces of the orgasm gap, including sociocultural influence, women’s difficulty achieving orgasms, biological differences in orgasm ability, men’s insufficiency in the bedroom, and poor interpersonal communication [4]. It is important to note that biological justifications for the orgasm gap have been thoroughly debunked. Wetzel asserts that women experience orgasms during masturbation after the same amount of time as men, which is roughly four minutes. The penis and the clitoris are actually anatomical complements. Women experience orgasms at similar rates to men when they masturbate, have sex with other women, receive oral sex, stimulate their clitoris during intercourse with men, or when they report pursuing orgasms very strongly. “If the orgasm gap were a biological inevitability, we wouldn’t see it disappear depending on the context,” Wetzel says.

Wetzel also points to the sociocultural realm where “there are so many deep-rooted, intersecting, intertwined causes that stem from all of the ways that we’re socialized sexually, that it would be basically impossible to parse all of those things apart, or even just have one simple answer.” She affirms that some of the causes are clear, such as insufficient clitoral stimulation and pressures on women to orgasm from intercourse alone, though penetration is the least reliable route to an orgasm for most women, further leading to their experience of sexual shame.

What can we do to help?

So many factors come together to form the orgasm gap. It may seem insurmountable, but Wetzel suggests it is easier to make progress at the individual or interpersonal level while we wait for interventions on overarching social issues. For example, couples might start having conversations about sex outside of the bedroom and decide what sex would look like for them if they have equal expectations for pleasure. Culturally, we can empower women to feel just as entitled to orgasms as men. Wetzel notes that in sexual situations, women should advocate for their own pleasure and guide their partners as a means of increasing their entitlement to orgasms. However, men should also be taking the time to advocate for their partners as well, since women’s pleasure actually predicts how much men expect people to orgasm (Figure 2). So, it is not just women who should care about the orgasm gap.

Wetzel states, “we have all been miseducated on what women’s pleasure looks like, so we are all unlearning it together, and hopefully can see it as a collaboration instead of looking at men negatively.”

Not only do men tend to want to please their partners, but research has also found links between women’s orgasm frequency and men’s sexual satisfaction [3]. This means that closing the orgasm gap presents a benefit to both women and men. Wetzel advises men to expect and make it known that they are prioritizing their partner’s pleasure. Fortunately, recent media geared toward men has been paying special attention to what they can do to boost women’s pleasure [5,6,7,8]. The most common advice is to engage in oral sex for women, which Wetzel definitely encourages. Men might also ask their partners what they want or make it easier for them to express their desires. This may include placing more emphasis on foreplay or seeing toys as friends rather than enemies in the bedroom [5].

We have a long way to go before we can eliminate the sexual scripts that make the orgasm gap possible. But in the meantime, we can all choose to educate ourselves and our partners. Wetzel suggests books as an accessible tool for the average person. She recommends Becoming Cliterate by Laurie Mintz or Emily Nagoski’s Come as You Are, to start. You can also check out Wetzel’s Instagram @orgasm_equality_, where she shares digestible graphics on her work on the orgasm gap!

References

1. Armstrong, E. A., England, P., & Fogarty, A. C. (2012). Accounting for women’s orgasm and sexual enjoyment in college hookups and relationships. American Sociological Review, 77(3), 435-462.
2. Piemonte, J. L., Conley, T. D., & Gusakova, S. (2019). Orgasm, gender, and responses to heterosexual casual sex. Personality and Individual Differences, 151, 109487.
3. Wetzel, G. M., Cultice, R. A., & Sanchez, D. T. (2022). Orgasm frequency predicts desire and expectation for orgasm: Assessing the orgasm gap within mixed-sex couples. Sex Roles, 86(7), 456-470. GRACE 2
4. Wetzel, G. M., & Sanchez, D. T. (2022). Heterosexual young adults’ experience with and perceptions of the orgasm gap: A mixed methods approach. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 46(2), 131-146. GRACE 1
5. Zane, Z. (2021, November 2). How to close the orgasm gap. Men’s Health. Retrieved November 26, 2022, from https://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/a31708565/orgasm-gap/
6. Lehewych, D. (2021, June 23). What men need to know about closing the orgasm gap. Restless Network. Retrieved November 26, 2022, from https://restlessnetwork.com/what-men-need-to-know-about-closing-the-orgasm-gap/
7. Manley, A. (2019, March 11). 8 sex myths guys need to UNLEARN ASAP. AskMen. Retrieved November 26, 2022, from https://www.askmen.com/sex/sex_education/things-guys-need-to-unlearn-about-sex.html
8. Manley, A. (2020, January 17). Next time you have sex, try not to climax – here’s why. AskMen. Retrieved November 26, 2022, from https://www.askmen.com/sex/sex_tips/the-orgasm-gap-what-it-is-and-why-you-should-care-about-it.html