Why Do Women Have Fewer Orgasms Than Men? Scientists Have a Brutal Answer.

A new study has officially confirmed what many women already suspected: when it comes to orgasms in heterosexual relationships, the scales are still tipped hard in one direction—and it’s not ours.

Researchers at the City University of New York asked 127 people in straight relationships to log their sex lives over three weeks. That totaled 566 sexual encounters. Men orgasm 90 percent of the time. Women only hit 54 percent.

The study, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, introduced a term for the pattern: the Orgasm Pursuit Gap (OGP). It refers to how much effort each partner puts into making a woman climax—and surprise, surprise, that effort is usually lopsided.

Why Do Women Orgasm Less Than Men?

Even when women were interested in orgasm, they often ended up doing most of the work to get there, while their partners either assumed it would happen on its own or checked out entirely. As the authors put it, a satisfying sexual experience depends on shared effort. And right now, that effort is wildly uneven.

Worse still, the data showed that both men and women tended to prioritize the man’s orgasm. The entire framework of straight sex—from positions to pacing to cultural expectations—still centers male pleasure by default, as if female enjoyment is secondary or optional.

And this is far from an isolated finding. A 2022 survey by Womanizer found that only 40% of women across age groups are satisfied with the amount of sex they’re having. Fewer than half had masturbated in the past year. Nearly two-thirds didn’t own a single sex toy.

The Orgasm Pursuit Gap clarifies one thing: inequality shows up in the bedroom just as much as in the boardroom or dinner table. This isn’t about women being “harder to please”—it’s about how little space has been made for their pleasure to matter. And how little effort is being put into changing that?

This gap isn’t closing on its own. If orgasm is still treated like a bonus instead of a baseline, we’re not evolving—we’re just reinforcing bad habits.

Sexual equity means everyone shows up, participates, and actually cares whether the other person finishes. Otherwise, it’s not intimacy—it’s performance.