Yes. About 56% of US women have ever viewed porn and 33% did so in the past year, according to a nationally representative survey of 2,075 US adult internet users, including 1,059 women, by Grubbs, Kraus & Perry (2019). Only 7.6% watch weekly or more.
Women are a large part of the audience. They made up 38% of Pornhub’s visitors in 2025, the company says, and about 28% of the UK’s adult porn audience in May 2024, according to Ofcom.
In this article, we’ll break down how many women watch porn, how often, how they compare with men, results by country and age, what they watch, which formats they prefer and how they feel about it.
Top Statistics on Women and Porn
- 56% of US women have ever viewed porn and 33% have in the past year, according to Grubbs, Kraus & Perry (2019).
- 7.6% of US women watch porn weekly or more, about 23% of women who watched in the past year.
- Women made up 38% of Pornhub’s visitors in 2025, up from 23% in 2014, the company says.
- Women made up 49.7% of Pornhub’s gay-content audience in 2026, up from 37% in 2018, according to the company.
- 57% of US women have read erotic stories, the same share as men, according to Herbenick et al. (2017).
- 58% of US women say viewing porn is morally wrong, vs 47% of men, according to Pew Research Center (2025).
How Many Women Watch Porn?
56% of US women have ever viewed porn, 33% have in the past year and 7.6% watch weekly or more, according to a nationally representative 2019 study of US adult internet users by Grubbs, Kraus & Perry. That’s 597 of the 1,059 women surveyed.
Other US surveys land in the same range. 60% of US women have ever watched sexually explicit videos, according to the 2015 Sexual Exploration in America Study (Herbenick et al., 2017).
44% of US women said they access porn in October 2023, up 5 percentage points from 39% in 2015, according to Barna Group.
Past-month use is much lower. Just 11% of US women watched porn in the past month in 2022, vs 44% of men, according to the AEI Survey Center on American Life, as reported by the Institute for Family Studies.
Here’s a breakdown of the main US surveys on women’s porn use:
| Survey | Women surveyed | Measure | Share of women |
|---|---|---|---|
| Herbenick et al. (2015 data) | US adults | Ever watched explicit videos | 60% |
| Fraumeni-McBride & Willoughby (2024 study) | Women 18–34 | Use pornography | 59.5% |
| Grubbs, Kraus & Perry (2019) | US adults | Ever viewed | 56% |
| Barna (October 2023) | US adults | Access porn | 44% |
| Regnerus et al. (2014 data) | Women 18–39 | Past year | 40% |
| Grubbs, Kraus & Perry (2019) | US adults | Past year | 33% |
| Regnerus et al. (2014 data) | Women 18–39 | Past month | 26% |
| AEI (2022) | US adults | Past month | 11% |
Source: Herbenick et al., PLoS ONE; Fraumeni-McBride & Willoughby; Grubbs, Kraus & Perry; Barna; Regnerus, Gordon & Price, via a JCU summary; AEI via IFS
The figures differ mainly because of the time frame. “Ever watched” lands between 56% and 60%, “past year” between 33% and 40%, and “past month” between 11% and 26%.
How Often Do Women Watch Porn?
7.6% of US women watch porn weekly or more and 1.9% watch daily, according to Grubbs, Kraus & Perry (2019). Most women who watch do so occasionally: only about 23% of past-year female viewers (81 of 354) watch weekly or more.
Other surveys find similar levels of frequent use:
- Only 2% of US women watched porn more than once a week in a 2015 YouGov poll.
- Fewer than 1 in 16 (about 6%) married US women watch weekly or daily, vs about a third of married men, according to the Wheatley Institute (2021).
- 12% of US women aged 25 and older seek out porn at least monthly, vs 47% of men, according to Barna (2015).
- 7% of US women aged 18–39 watch online porn daily, vs 16% of men, according to an IFS/YouGov survey (IFS, 2024).
- 21% of Canadian university women watch porn once a week or more, vs 53% of men, according to SIECCAN (2019).
Do Women Watch Less Porn Than Men?
Yes, in every national survey we found. 60% of US women have ever watched explicit videos, vs 82% of men, a 22-point gap (Herbenick et al., 2017).
The gap with the share of men who watch porn widens as use gets more frequent:
- Past year: 35.0% of US men saw an X-rated movie in 2012, about 2.2 times women’s 15.8% (GSS via NORC).
- One month: 43% of UK online men visited a porn site in May 2024, about 2.7 times women’s 16% (Ofcom via Telecoms.com).
- Past 3 months: 46% of French men aged 18–69 visited a porn site, about 3.3 times women’s 14% (Ifop, 2023).
- Weekly: 36% of British men watch porn at least once a week, 9 times women’s 4% (YouGov, 2022).
- Frequent: 18% of Swedish men use porn at least 3 days a week, 18 times women’s 1% (Folkhälsomyndigheten, 2017).
The gap disappears for written erotica. 57% of US women have read erotic stories, exactly the same share as men (Herbenick et al., 2017).
Women Who Watch Porn by Country
Between 53% and 56% of women have ever watched porn in the US, Britain and Australia, but recent use is far lower: 16% of UK online women visited a porn site in May 2024, and 14% of French women did in the past three months.
Here’s a breakdown of women’s porn use by country:
| Country | Measure | Women | Men | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Ever viewed | 56% | – | 2019 |
| Australia (16–69) | Ever viewed | 54% | 84% | 2012–13 |
| Great Britain | Ever watched | 53% | 76% | 2022 |
| France (18–69) | Ever visited a porn site | 37% | – | 2023 |
| Sweden (16–84) | Used porn | 27.0% | 68.7% | 2017 |
| Poland | Female internet users who visited porn sites in a month (tracked) | 24% | – | 2016 |
| Australia (16–69) | Past year | ~22% | – | 2012–13 |
| United Kingdom | Visited a porn site in one month | 16% | 43% | 2024 |
| Great Britain | Watch porn currently | 15% | – | 2022 |
| France (18–69) | Past 3 months | 14% | 46% | 2023 |
Source: Grubbs et al.; Rissel et al. (ASHR2); YouGov GB; Ifop; Malki et al.; Lewczuk et al.; Ofcom via Telecoms.com
In the UK, the 16% of online women equals about 3.8 million women in May 2024. Men made up 72% of the UK porn audience that month, so women were about 28% (Ofcom).
In Australia, 41% of women who had ever seen porn looked at it in the past year, about 22% of all women (Rissel et al., 2017).
Is the Number of Women Watching Porn Growing?
Survey data shows no clear long-term rise. 15.8% of US women saw an X-rated movie in the past year in 2012, below the 21.0% recorded in 1973, according to the General Social Survey (NORC).
The GSS question asks about “X-rated movies,” a wording that may undercount online viewing. The series peaked at 22.7% in 1987, during the VCR era, and fell to 13.9% in 2006.
Newer data points upward. Barna found 44% of US women accessed porn in 2023, vs 39% in 2015.
Women’s share of Pornhub’s audience has grown steadily, according to the company’s annual reports. It rose 15 percentage points, from 23% in 2014 to 38% in 2025.
Here’s a breakdown of women’s share of Pornhub visitors by year:
| Year | Women’s share of visitors |
|---|---|
| 2014 | 23% |
| 2015 | 24% |
| 2017 | 26% |
| 2018 | 29% |
| 2019 | 32% |
| 2021 | 35% |
| 2023 | 36% |
| 2024 | 38% |
| 2025 | 38% |
Source: Pornhub Year in Review (company-reported), via Refinery29, Campaign, Il Post, Fortune Italia, Instalki.pl, The American Spectator, Expreso, IBTimes Australia and ITC.ua
Third-party estimates are lower. Similarweb’s panel puts women at 22.33% of pornhub.com visitors (2026). Both figures are estimates, one self-reported and one modelled, so the true share is uncertain.
Women’s Porn Use by Age
Younger women are far more likely to watch porn. 35% of British women under 30 say they watch porn, vs 2% of women aged 60 and older (YouGov, 2022).
In the US, 44% of young women say they have never watched porn, so about 56% have. Among women 65 and older, 81% have never watched, meaning about 19% have (AEI Survey Center on American Life, via IFS, 2022).
About 60% (59.5%) of US women aged 18–34 reported using porn in a 2024 study (Fraumeni-McBride & Willoughby). In 2008, a study of US college students put the figure at 31% of young women (Carroll et al.).
Among Swedish women aged 16–24, 8.6% use porn 1–2 times a week, 3.1% 3–5 times a week and 1.2% daily (Malki et al., 2021).
Exposure often starts before adulthood. 65% of girls in England had seen porn before turning 18, vs 73% of boys, according to the Children’s Commissioner for England (2025). In the US, 36% of girls aged 13–17 had viewed it intentionally, vs 52% of boys (Common Sense Media, 2022).
Do Women Watch Porn Alone or With a Partner?
Women are less likely than men to watch alone. 31.6% of women in unmarried relationships had viewed explicit material on their own, vs 76.8% of men, about 2.4 times as many (Maddox, Rhoades & Markman, 2011).
Viewing together is common. 44.8% of people in relationships in the same study said they sometimes watched with their partner.
Among seriously dating couples, only 15% of women always watch alone, vs 49% of men, according to research by Carroll & Willoughby summarized by the Institute for Family Studies. 65% of married women say they never use porn, vs 37% of married men.
What Porn Do Women Watch?
Lesbian was women’s most-viewed category on Pornhub in 2025, followed by Japanese, MILF and anal, according to the company’s Year in Review as reported by Tyla.
Compared with men, women over-index on a different set. Here’s a breakdown of the categories women viewed more than men on Pornhub in 2025:
| Category | How much more women viewed it than men |
|---|---|
| Reality | +155% |
| Popular With Women | +102% |
| Female oral | +99% |
| Bisexual Male | +67% |
| Solo Male | +48% |
Source: Pornhub 2025 Year in Review (company-reported), via Tyla
Lesbian content has led women’s viewing for a decade, and lab research on women’s arousal helps explain why straight women watch lesbian porn. Women viewed it 132% more than men in 2014 (Bustle), 197% more in 2017 (Inquirer Technology), 151% more in 2018 (Daily Hive) and 196% more in 2023 (SAYS), the company reported. In 2023, women also viewed trans content 175% more than men.
About 20% of the videos women watch on Pornhub feature lesbian scenes, according to an analysis by data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (Big Think).
Gay male porn has a large female audience, and surveys of those viewers explain why women watch gay porn. Women made up 49.7% of Pornhub’s gay-content audience in 2026 (Instinct Magazine), up 12.7 percentage points from 37% of gay-content viewers in 2018 (University of Leicester), Pornhub says.
In a survey of 275 women who watch gay male porn, 82% said it was their preferred type (Neville, 2015, via PsyPost).
Survey research groups women’s tastes into profiles. Here’s a breakdown of genre profiles among women who use porn:
39% of women porn users had a mixed profile, 27% a traditionally feminine one, 23% a “female pleasure” profile (such as lesbian content and female orgasm) and 11% a rough profile, according to Maas et al. (2023).
Demand for content made with women in mind is growing. “Porn for women” was Pornhub’s top trending search of 2017, up over 1,400%, according to the company as reported by Inquirer Technology, and it launched a “Popular With Women” category in February 2018 (Bustle).
Countries Where Women Make Up the Most Porn Viewers
64% of Pornhub’s visitors from the Philippines were women in 2025, the highest share of any country, according to the company as reported by IBTimes Australia. Colombia and Argentina followed at 56%.
At the other end, women made up 25% of UK visitors, the lowest share globally (Dazed), and 28% of US visitors (IBTimes Australia).
The Philippines’ female share rose 28 percentage points in eight years. Here’s a breakdown:
| Year | Women’s share of Philippine visitors |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 36% |
| 2018 | 38% |
| 2019 | 39% |
| 2022 | 53% |
| 2023 | 58% |
| 2024 | 59% |
| 2025 | 64% |
Source: Pornhub Year in Review (company-reported), via Inquirer Technology, Inverse, GadgetMatch, Inquirer News, PhilSTAR L!fe and IBTimes Australia
Do Women Prefer Written or Audio Porn?
Women are as likely as men to read erotica, and in one online sample they were much more likely than men to use written porn. 57% of US women have read erotic stories, matching men, while 60% have watched explicit videos (Herbenick et al., 2017).
In that online US sample, 60.2% of women had used porn in the past month (Solano, Eaton & O’Leary, 2020).
Web traffic shows the same split. Here’s a breakdown of the estimated female share of visitors to video, text and audio sites:
Text and audio platforms have female majorities in Similarweb’s panel, while video sites, including ones built for women such as Bellesa (38.75%), still skew male. The gap between Similarweb’s 22.33% and Pornhub’s own 38% shows how far these estimates can differ.
Audio erotica is now a sizable business:
- Women make up 77% of users of Quinn, an audio erotica app (Business Insider via Yahoo News, 2024), and 83% of its subscribers (Sacra).
- Sacra estimates Quinn reached about $34 million in annualized revenue in August 2026.
- Dipsea had 93,847 paying subscribers and close to $6 million in annual recurring revenue when RevenueCat acquired it in September 2024 (TechCrunch).
- 61% of FrolicMe’s new audio-story listeners during the 2020 lockdown were women, the company told Dazed.
Fan fiction and romance draw large female audiences too. 53.8% of 5,000 Archive of Our Own users surveyed in 2022 were cisgender women (Flow Journal), and about 18% of the site’s works were rated Explicit in 2012 (AO3).
82% of romance readers are women, according to Romance Writers of America. US romance print sales rose about 2.2 times, from 18 million copies in 2020 to 39 million in 2023 (Circana BookScan, via SCMP).
How Do Women Feel About Porn?
Most US women disapprove of porn. 58% of women say viewing porn is morally wrong, vs 47% of men, according to Pew Research Center (2025).
Here’s a breakdown of how many women find porn morally acceptable:
| Survey | Women | Men | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouGov (US) | 30% | 49% | 2015 |
| Gallup (US) | 25% | 43% | 2015 |
| Research Co. (Canada) | 20% | 39% | 2024 |
| Pew Research Center (US) | 11% | 19% | 2025 |
Source: YouGov; Gallup; Research Co.; Pew Research Center. Question wording differs between surveys.
56% of US women would prefer their partner not watch porn; 6% would prefer that they do (YouGov, 2015).
Women who watch porn mostly report neutral or positive effects:
- 84% of Australian women who had seen porn disagreed that it had a bad effect on them, and 1% felt addicted (Rissel et al., 2017).
- 14% of Swedish women said porn had a mostly positive effect on their sex life, vs 4% mostly negative (Folkhälsomyndigheten, 2017).
- A meta-analysis of 50 studies linked porn use to lower sexual and relationship satisfaction for men only, with no significant link for women (Wright et al., 2017).
- A review of 34 studies found women’s porn use was generally associated with better sexual functioning, desire and orgasm frequency; problematic use was linked to poorer functioning, and almost all studies were correlational (Komlenac & Birke, 2025).
Problematic use is rare among women. 0.72% of women in the 42-country International Sex Survey were at risk of problematic porn use on the main screening tool, vs 6.26% of men, about 8.7 times as many (Bőthe et al., 2024). Other screens put the women’s figure at 2.96% or 7.01%.
About 2.7% of all US women (4.9% of women who have ever watched) agree they are “addicted to pornography,” according to Grubbs, Kraus & Perry (2019).
Why Do Women Watch Porn?
Men report stronger motives than women on most of the eight motives researchers use to explain porn use. Men scored higher on 6 of 8 porn-use motives, while men did not score higher on sexual curiosity or self-exploration (Bőthe et al., 2021).
The reason is linked to outcomes. Among 46,874 women in 42 countries, porn used for pleasure or curiosity was linked to fewer sexual problems and higher desire, while use driven by an unsatisfying relationship was linked to more problems (Gewirtz-Meydan et al., 2025).
How We Compiled These Statistics
We collected 285 candidate data points from peer-reviewed studies, national surveys (GSS, Ofcom, YouGov, Pew, Gallup, Folkhälsomyndigheten, ASHR2, Ifop), company reports and web-analytics panels, then traced each figure to its original publisher where possible.
Pornhub figures are company-reported and come from press coverage of its annual reports. Similarweb shares are third-party panel estimates. Surveys use different populations and time frames (“ever,” “past year,” “past month”), so we label each figure and avoid comparing across measures.
Ratios and percentage-point changes (“2.2 times,” “+15 points”) are our own calculations from the sourced figures. Associations between porn use and outcomes are correlational and don’t show cause and effect.
Key Takeaways
Most women have watched porn: 56% of US women ever, and 33% in the past year. Weekly viewing is rare at 7.6%, and men are 9 to 18 times as likely to be frequent viewers in British and Swedish surveys.
Women’s share of the online audience is growing, reaching 38% of Pornhub’s visitors in 2025 by the company’s count and 64% in the Philippines. They gravitate toward lesbian content, gay male porn (49.7% of that audience) and written and audio erotica, where they equal or outnumber men.
FAQ
Do women watch porn?
Yes. 56% of US women have ever viewed porn and 33% did in the past year, according to a nationally representative 2019 survey of US adult internet users. Women made up 38% of Pornhub’s visitors in 2025, the company says.
What percentage of women watch porn?
Between 56% and 60% of US women have ever watched porn, and 33% have in the past year. In the UK, 16% of online women visited a porn site in May 2024; in France, 14% did in the past three months.
How often do women watch porn?
Most women who watch do so occasionally. 7.6% of US women watch weekly or more and 1.9% daily; in Britain, 4% of women watch at least weekly, vs 36% of men.
What porn do women watch most?
Lesbian was women’s #1 category on Pornhub in 2025, followed by Japanese, MILF and anal. Women also make up 49.7% of Pornhub’s gay-content audience and viewed the Reality category 155% more than men.
Do women prefer reading erotica to watching porn?
Many do. 57% of US women have read erotic stories, the same share as men, and text and audio platforms like Archive of Our Own and Dipsea have majority-female audiences, while video sites skew male.
Why do women watch porn?
Sexual curiosity and self-exploration are the only motives where men did not score higher than women. Men scored higher on the other six motives measured.
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