Women, especially heterosexuals, are less likely to orgasm during sex than heterosexual men, which is known as the “orgasm gap”
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One study found that bisexual women predicted they would be more likely to orgasm when having sex with another woman than when they had sex with a man.
Orgasm is often a strong indicator of sexual satisfaction and often reflects satisfaction in a relationship.A study of more than 52,000 adults in the United States david frederick Chapman University in California and colleagues found 95% of heterosexual men say they usually always climax during sexcompared with 65% of heterosexual women.
This difference is often called the “orgasm gap,” and research shows it has almost completely disappeared while masturbating or Behaviors such as clitoral stimulation. In Chapman and his team’s study, 86 percent of lesbian women and 66 percent of bisexual women said they usually always climax during sex.
To learn more about the orgasm gap, Grace Wetzel J. and her colleagues at Rutgers University in New Jersey asked 481 bisexual women, none of whom were transgender, to imagine themselves in hypothetical sexual situations. About half were asked to imagine themselves with a man, and the others with a woman.
Participants were asked to rate their orgasm expectations on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 meaning they thought orgasm was extremely unlikely and 7 meaning orgasm was very likely. When they imagined having sex with men, they scored an average of 4.88, compared with an average score of 5.86 when they imagined having sex with women. Although this appears to be a relatively small difference, statistical analysis shows that the results are not a chance finding.
In another part of the study, the researchers asked an additional 476 women to complete an online survey about their sexual experiences with recent or current partners. None of these women are transgender. Less than 60% of them are heterosexual, the remainder are lesbian.
Lesbian women reportedly reach orgasm 78 percent of the time, compared with 65 percent of heterosexual women. They also had higher orgasm expectations before sexual encounters, were more active in trying to orgasm during sex, and reported receiving more clitoral stimulation.
“We know from research that clitoral stimulation is key to female orgasm,” Wetzel said. “So the reason women have more orgasms than other women is because clitoral stimulation becomes more frequent.”
Studies have found that women who have sex with women expect more clitoral stimulation. “The dominant heterosexual script doesn’t leave a lot of opportunity for female orgasm because it focuses more on penetration than clitoral stimulation,” Wetzel says.
But “sexual scripts can be very flexible,” she said. “Heterosexual couples can reduce the orgasm gap in their relationships by prioritizing the sexual behaviors women need to achieve orgasm.”
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