

For around a quarter of these, this happened before the age of 13, and for a tenth, before the age of 10.īut the average age at first sexual intercourse was 17. Most of the women under the age of 35 who participated in the study had experienced their first orgasm through masturbation.

Osmo Kontula – from the Population Research Institute at the Family Federation of Finland in Helsinki – asked more than 8,000 women in Finland about their sexual experiences. Putting the stigma of social expectations and the fantasy world of pornography aside, what does scientific research tell us about women’s orgasms? How much of a role does the clitoris play, and, most importantly, what do women want when it comes to achieving sexual satisfaction?Ī study by Prof. How the female orgasm is depicted in pornography does not tally up with research findings, with Séguin writing that “mainstream pornography promotes and perpetuates many unrealistic expectations regarding women’s orgasm.”

In a recent survey, 53 percent of men and 25 percent of women in the United States said they had watched pornography in the past year. In 50 popular video clips included in the study, only 18.3 percent of women were shown to reach orgasm, and stimulation of the clitoris or vulva only featured in 25 percent of these. Séguin – from the Department of Sexology at Université du Québec à Montréal in Canada – examined how female orgasms are represented in mainstream pornography. And when depictions of sex in the media are thrown into the mix, the gap between expectation and reality widens even further. The social expectations surrounding women’s orgasms can be particularly distressing to women who don’t always experience them. But many women don’t experience an orgasm during sexual intercourse until their 20s or even 30s, and the number of women who say that they always or nearly always have one during sex is declining. The female orgasm is often depicted as the center of a woman’s sexual satisfaction and the ultimate goal of sex. Share on Pinterest Research shows that sexual self-esteem and good communication are important factors in women’s sexual satisfaction.
