The Pleasure Gap

Millions of women in our country experience some mix of low desire, absent pleasure, tanking lust and elusive orgasms. It’s just stress, motherhood, anxiety, poor body image, or plain old boring monogamy though, right? Wife loses interest, husband is left cold for too long-these and similar narratives have been accepted as the norm.

With The Pleasure Gap, Katherine Rowland aims to dismantle such claims once and for all. Women aren’t less sexual than men, she asserts, for one and they’re certainly not predetermined to lose sexual drive as they age. And, in fascinating new accounts featured by Rowland, a growing number of women are taking steps to reignite their sexuality.

Through rich narrative accounts of dozens of women and sexual health professionals, science journalism, social criticism and compelling profiles of women from all walks of life, Rowland argues that the pleasure gap is neither medical malady nor psychological condition but rather a result of our culture’s troubled relationship with women’s sexual expression and pleasure.