Is Women’s Desire for Sex Really That Different From Men's?

A team of researchers led by Emily Harris from the University of Melbourne investigated men’s and women’s feelings of sexual desire over short- and long-term durations. The authors defined sexual desire as “an interest in being sexual with other people or solo sexuality.” Importantly, the authors distinguished between “trait” sexual desire, which is a person’s general level of sexual desire, and which stays relatively stable over time, and “state” sexual desire, which is a person’s level of sexual desire at any given moment, and which fluctuates over time.

The current research assessed trait and state sexual desire. Although researchers have theorized that men’s sexual desire is stable and strong over time while women’s sexual desire is more unstable and variable, the current research suggests that women’s sexual desire varies only slightly more than men’s and only over the long term.

Study 1

In Study 1, the researchers assessed sexual desire over the long term, or trait sexual desire. Data were collected at three points during a 13-year study. The participants were asked about the strength of their sexual desire for their partners and in general.

Men reported stronger levels of sexual desire than women. Furthermore, over the long term, the researchers found that women’s sexual desire was more variable than men’s sexual desire. However, the effect size for the difference in variability across genders was small. The researchers concluded that over the long term, there was a small difference in the variability of men’s and women’s sexual desire but that “the overlap in women’s and men’s distributions far exceeds the differences.”

Study 2

In Study 2, the researchers assessed sexual desire in heterosexual couples who had relationships lasting at least three months. The couples were asked to respond to six surveys assessing state sexual desire for their partners each day for one week. The researchers found that men’s sexual desire was slightly, though not significantly, higher than women’s sexual desire.

Furthermore, both men and women showed “large fluctuations in desire” over the one week, and there was no difference in the variability of men’s and women’s sexual desire during this week. The researchers did note that fatigue seemed to influence women’s sexual desire more strongly. For example, although feeling angry and stressed was linked with declines in sexual desire for both men and women, feelings of fatigue were more strongly linked to declines in women’s sexual desire than men’s.

Study 3

In Study 3, the authors assessed general sexual desire as opposed to desire for one’s partner. Similar to the results of Study 1, men’s sexual desire was significantly stronger than women’s sexual desire. However, similar to the results of Study 2, men’s and women’s variability in state sexual desire did not differ. The authors stated that there was “striking consistency in men’s and women’s fluctuations in sexual desire” over the one-week period.

Furthermore, the larger fluctuations in women’s sexual desire when experiencing fatigue, which were present in Study 2, were not evidenced in Study 3. The authors suggested that distinguishing between trait sexual desire and state sexual desire will be important in future research and that women’s sexual desire may be more variable than men’s only when considering desire over the long term.

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