Women are having less sex, Australian Women's Weekly survey reveals

She was disappointed when I said the closest I got was having impure thoughts about Scotland captain Jamie Ritchie, particularly on the night he lined up against Ireland blindside flanker Peter O'Mahony. We'll always have Paris. The three of us.

Okay, there was some physical contact with a Portuguese lothario before the Wallabies' game in Saint-Etienne but he was hugging every woman wearing gold. It wasn't because he thought I was special.

I know people find it awkward when women of a certain age talk about sex. So I was excited to read the current edition of The Australian Women's Weekly.

The Weekly, which I've been reading since I could read, stealing the latest edition from my mother's hair salon after the clients had finished with it that week (it went monthly in January 1983), is a strange beast.

It's far more ground-breaking and relevant and agenda-setting than most people give it credit for. Still. And it's celebrating its 90th birthday this year.

Alongside a cover story about actor Helen Mirren encouraging us to age disgracefully and a profile of author Jilly Cooper whose latest saucy novel is called Tackle! (the tagline reads "If you want to score, you've got to be a player" and there's a photo of a woman tucking a red card into a pair of football shorts - why is my umpiring never so interesting?), this December edition contains the results of the Voice of Australian Women Survey.

Over the years this survey has fascinated me. I'm sure readers of The Weekly are a certain type. According to the latest Roy Morgan readership data The Weekly print readership is up 9 per cent year-on-year to 1.3 million with a cross-platform audience of almost 2.6 million a month. Current editor-in-chief Nicole Byers told the Guardian the print magazine still outsells the digital edition. (Anyone in the industry of the printed word would love those figures.) Maybe the typical Weekly reader is harder to define than I think.

But back to the survey. More than 5000 women were canvassed on their opinions on sex, love and marriage; on work; on menopause; and mental health. What was interesting about the 2023 survey was that it followed on from similar landmark surveys in 1980 (when then editor Ita Buttrose received answers from 30,000 households) and 2007. The comparison of results makes for fascinating reading.

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The results showed that Australian women want equality, a chance to pursue careers without being penalised for having children, for equal pay. And an end to domestic violence, to coercive control, to physical, sexual and financial abuse.

But to bring it back to my introduction, it appears that in 2023 we are much better at talking about sex and intimacy than we were in 1980. Surely that's a good thing?

Maybe not. In 1980, 57 per cent of couples were having sex at least once a week and three per cent were doing it daily. In 2023, only 36 per cent of couples were having sex weekly, and only 2 per cent daily. Today, sex is a "rare occurrence" for one in five women (21 per cent), up dramatically from 9 per cent in 1980.

But, says Relationships Australia chief executive officer Elisabeth Stroud, this could be a good thing.

"In year's past, there was a hell of a lot of dutiful sex," she told The Weekly. "A lot more women were having sex when they didn't want to, and there's a little more permission, socially, for that not to be the case [now]."

Seven out of 10 women are satisfied with their sex lives in 2023, down slightly from 1980 at 73 per cent. The highest level of dissatisfaction was in the 50-64 age group. I hear you.

More women than ever before are experiencing orgasm, according to the survey. But only 18 per cent "always" reach it during sex. More of us are faking it too, or at least admitting to faking it, at 27 per cent, up from 17 per cent back in 1980. But back then one in five women didn't answer that question.

The Weekly acknowledged while there was cause to cheer progress, it was clear there was still more work to do. In and out of the bedroom, it seems.

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