Flo Health Pledges its Commitment to Female Sexual Health with the Launch of Largest Global Study on Female Orgasms to Date

London, April 16, 2024 – Flo, the world's leading women's health app with 64 million global monthly active users, is pledging its commitment to advancing the global understanding of female sexual health by launching the largest female orgasm study to date. The subject of female sexual pleasure and climax remains under-researched and under-explored, with nearly four times more research into understanding aspects of men’s sexual functioning. Flo pledges 2024 as the year dedicated to pioneering research in this field, aiming to fill crucial gaps in research and promote a more informed approach to women's sexual health. 

Flo’s commitment aligns with the World Health Organization's view that sexual health is a fundamental aspect of overall health and well-being. Furthermore, Flo believes that every person has the right to sexual pleasure as part of their sexual health, echoing the Declaration on Sexual Pleasure from the World Association for Sexual Health. It is Flo’s view that orgasms are a key aspect of sexual pleasure as well as a predictor of sexual satisfaction.

According to Flo's calculations and publicly available data, women would need to spend at least 436 hours or 18.18 days more than men across their lifetime to reach the same number of orgasms, underscoring the need to both better understand and normalize the differences in sexual experiences and pleasure for women. In order to help couples improve their sexual communication, Flo recently launched "Flo for Partners", and found that men have +40% higher retention rates than their partners. Many outstanding questions about the orgasm gap remain, however, underscoring the need to both better understand and normalize the differences in sexual experiences and pleasure for women. 

Jordan Rullo, Flo Medical Expert and Certified Sex Therapist, commented: “As a sex therapist I frequently encounter women expressing concerns about taking too long to reach orgasm. When I hear this, I ask “compared to whom?” Unfortunately, society and social media often sell men’s sexual function as the ideal, but the fact that women take nearly three times as long as men to reach orgasm does not necessarily indicate a problem, it is simply a difference. ​​Our study will aim to break the stigma surrounding these differences, recalibrate societal expectations, and empower women worldwide by normalizing the variety of orgasm experiences.” 

With this study, Flo aims to improve the collective understanding of women’s sexual practices and how these relate to sexual pleasure, orgasms, and sexual satisfaction. Various Flo studies have illuminated the need for greater research and understanding of female sexual health among both women and men:

• One third of men (31%) believe that most women can orgasm from vaginal stimulation alone. 
• In reality, only 18.4% of women orgasm just from vaginal stimulation, with the majority  requiring or preferring additional clitoral stimulation.
• At the same time, 29% of women feel embarrassed to talk to their partner about what they like during sex.
• This sense of shame and embarrassment is also present when it comes to self-pleasure with 21% of UK women and 18% of US women feeling that masturbation is shameful or wrong. 

Dr. Liudmila Zhaunova, Director of Science at Flo Health, commented: “The bias towards male physiology as the norm has seeped into expectations surrounding female orgasm, and it’s time to reset these unrealistic standards placed on women. At Flo, we have an amazing opportunity to harness the experiences of our 60 million monthly users to further our understanding and knowledge of female sexual health and orgasms. We hope that the results of our study will enhance women's understanding of navigating their sexual experiences and pleasure, supported by real-life data from peers worldwide. This year, we look forward to helping close this glaring research gap and aim to contribute toward improving the sexual experiences of millions of women around the world.”

Flo’s global orgasm study will be conducted in partnership with Jordan Rullo, Adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology & Health Psychology at the University of Utah and will assess anonymized insights from tens of thousands of women. Flo will also engage their Scientific Advisory Board, which features some of the brightest minds in health, psychology and neuroscience from around the world. Flo frequently partners with the likes of John Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, University of Virginia and the University College London and research has been published in highly respectable journals, including Nature Portfolio Journal: Mental Health Research.

About Flo Health: Flo Health is the #1 app in the Health & Fitness category; it is the #1 OB-GYN-recommended app for period and cycle tracking based on a 2021 survey among 500 US OB-GYNs. Over 350 million people have downloaded Flo, and 64 million people use it on a monthly basis. With over 120 medical experts, Flo supports women and people who menstruate during their entire reproductive lives and provides curated cycle and ovulation tracking, personalized health insights, expert tips, and a fully closed community for users to share their questions and concerns. Flo prioritizes safety and keeps a sharp focus on being the most trusted digital source for​ ​women’s health information. As part of the company’s commitment to privacy, Flo Health’s Anonymous Mode feature was named a finalist for Fast Company’s 2023 World Changing Ideas Awards in the Rapid Response category. For more information, please visit https://flo.health.
 

Sources and methodology:

US sources used in calculations:

https://bedbible.com/sex-frequency-statistics

https://kinseyinstitute.org/research/faq.php

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm

https://academic.oup.com/jsm/article-abstract/2/4/492/6863143?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

https://www.issm.info/sexual-health-qa/how-long-does-it-take-a-woman-to-reach-orgasm/

In order to calculate the amount of times it takes to reach an orgasm per lifetime, Flo looked at the frequency of sexual intercourse per age group (starting from the average age of sexual debut for men and women and cutting off at the average life expectancy at birth for men and women). This was then multiplied by the time it takes to orgasm. The final figures were derived from the difference in time spent reaching an orgasm for men and women. 

Please note that for the purpose of these calculations and due to the lack of available data, an assumption had to be made that the frequency of sexual intercourse is the same as the frequency or orgasms - i.e. every time men and women have sex (according to the available sources) they also both climax.