These explanations are what social scientists call “ gender essentialism” - the belief that there are natural, biological and physical differences between men and women. This way of thinking isn’t new or isolated to the bedroom. So feeling emotionally connected to one’s partner and whether women orgasm become mutually exclusive. Women are expected to inherently desire emotional connection and men are expected to inherently need physical release. One of the reigning myths that helps maintain the orgasm gap is that there are inherent gender differences for why men and women have sex. To understand this discrepancy, we conducted in-depth interviews with adult men and women across Canada to examine the underlying beliefs and feelings that deters couples from engaging in the types of sexual activities that would make it more likely for women to reach orgasm. The notion that women generally require some form of clitoral stimulation in order to reach orgasm has been documented by a number of sexualities researchers, but what’s unclear is why the gap persists despite knowing the importance of clitoral stimulation for women. What reduced the gap among our sample? Oral sex. We used data from our nationally representative Sex in Canada survey to establish that there is a gender gap in orgasms - 86 per cent of cisgender men reported having an orgasm in their most recent heterosexual sexual encounter, compared to 62 per cent of cisgender women.
