sponsored post : are women becoming more confident in the bedroom?

(Image via Jean KOULEV)

This post was sponsored by C-date. If you have questions or concerns about sponsored posts, contact Zoya at [email protected].

There is a narrative about sex that I think we all have come to believe, somewhat subconsciously, without really examining it. It’s that in the bedroom (and in a heterosexual context), men run the show. Men are presumed to be more sexually confident, outgoing and easily satisfied than women.

That’s just how it goes, right?

Well, according to an international study commissioned by casual dating site, C-date, that’s not how it goes at all. The study, conducted by Trend Research in 11 countries with over 8,000 respondents, found that when it comes to sexual confidence, women are actually ahead of men.

When asked how satisfied they are with their sex life, 27.6% of women responded ‘very’, as compared to only 19.3% of men. Even more interestingly, when asked ‘do you feel that you can get sex when you want it?’, 38.8% of women responded ‘yes’, in contrast to only 18.1% of men.

Should this data be surprising? Having spent a large portion of my single life feeling very uncertain about my chances of getting sex when I wanted it, trying hard to toe the line between ‘sexually confident’ and being branded a ‘slut’ by the sexist masses, and generally feeling insecure about what men thought of me, I was somewhat staggered by the survey results presented by C-date.

But when I showed the survey to a male friend, he had the opposite reaction to me. ‘Isn’t that obvious?’ he said. ‘Of course women can get sex whenever they want it.’

It certainly is gratifying to see so many women being in charge of their sexuality, and being satisfied with their sex lives. But I wonder if, outside of that demographic, society’s views on the gendered roles in sexuality have changed very much.

I still spend time with girlfriends, wondering if it’s appropriate to engage in oral sex on a third date, or whether that will make guys think we’re ‘easy’. We still often wait at the bar each night, hoping someone will approach us and only rarely approaching men when they catch our eye.

I still hear guys calling girls ‘sluts’ for sleeping with them, and boasting about their chances of getting laid on each night out.

It seems likely to me, having read these survey results, that this culture is bred less out of actual truths in our society, and more out of a kind of nervous attempt to date and have sex in a way that we assume is acceptable and most likely to yield results.

When in fact, huge swathes of the community are out having satisfying sex just by being confident and secure in what they want. C-date’s survey results prove that women can be just as confident and sexually outgoing as we always assume men are – and even more so, as the case may be.

Perhaps the lesson to learn here is that when it comes to having a great sex life, the only thing holding you back is likely to be, well, you.