When ‘sex’ only means penetration, of course there’s a huge orgasm gap between men and women

‘The things that happen with lips and hands and tongues and fingers and toys are too often not considered ‘proper sex’.’ Photograph: B-D-S Piotr Marcinski/Rex/Shutterstock

Women are having fewer orgasms than men. No kidding. I can already picture the sardonic comments piling in: “This isn’t news!” What might be news, possibly, is the fact that women continue to have fewer orgasms than men throughout their lives, despite what we might assume would be an increase in experience and confidence, and an understanding (on both sides) of what they enjoy in bed.

A new study, published in the journal Sexual Medicine, found that not only do men report higher rates of orgasm during sex than women, but also that these stats remain consistent with age. Researchers surveyed 24,000 single Americans aged from 18 to 100. Men’s orgasm rates ranged from 70% to 85%, while women’s ranged from 46% to 58%. Any hope that we might achieve parity with age quickly went out the window. Women’s orgasm rates remained 22 to 30 percentage points lower than men’s across all age groups.