The question of how often women masturbate is really code for two things. First, straight guys want to know whether women are as horny as they are. Second, women want to know if their horniness is “normal.”
The problem with quantifying any of this is that everyone’s masturbation habits — regardless of gender — vary widely. Some people never masturbate; others jack it three times a day. Neither are too outlandish.
That said, there is some data to help us establish a foundation here. Generally speaking, most surveys on masturbation habits across genders suggest that women do masturbate less frequently than men. A British study published in August found that men in the U.K. masturbate approximately 174 times a year, or around every other day, while women masturbate 59 times a year, or around once a week.
Meanwhile, a 2009 report from Indiana University’s National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior found that although there’s a disparity between how often men and women masturbate, age also plays a major role. Twenty percent of men between the ages of 25 and 29 responded that they masturbate several times a week; only 5 percent of women said the same. Around 21 percent of women in that demographic said they masturbate several times a month, however, similar to the 25 percent of men who reported that frequency. But as the older people get, the less they masturbate, something that’s again more dramatic among women than men — 68.6 percent of women over 70 said they hadn’t masturbated in the last year, compared to 53.6 percent of men. (Nearly two percent of men and half a percent of women over 70 said they masturbate over four times week, to which I gotta say: Hell yeah.)
With all the data, you can basically surmise that there’s around a 70 percent chance that a woman between the ages of 18 and 50 masturbates at least a few times a year, though I think that’s a very conservative estimate. It’s probably more fair to assume that 70 percent of them masturbate at least a few times a month.
It obviously also matters who exactly you’re talking to. I polled my own Twitter followers, a group that I have to assume is above-average in their horniness, and 20 percent of respondents said they never or rarely masturbate (I asked specifically for women’s responses, though there’s no way for me to know exactly who answered). Fifteen percent said they masturbate once a week, 36 percent said they masturbate several times a week and 28 percent said they masturbate once a day.
All of this suggests that my Twitter followers are indeed waaaaaay hornier than the average Indiana University respondent, as would be my hope.
So as a final answer to the question of how often women masturbate, I’m going to say they probably masturbate at least a few times a month. There’s a decent chance that they masturbate daily or more, but there’s an even better chance that they don’t masturbate at all.
Again, there isn’t a problem with any of this, and none of it necessarily indicates how horny a person is. After all, someone might not masturbate because they’re having sex all the time, instead. But generally, yes, women are indeed horny. Maybe not as horny as some men, but still, horny.
Unless you’re one of my Twitter followers, in which case, you’re very horny.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
