How Many Women Watch Porn?

What kind of porn do women watch? Do women even watch porn? Let’s take a look at Pornhub’s self-reported site analytics and current research specifically focused on women’s pornography use.

But first, let’s talk about the harmful effects of porn.

Decades of studies from respected academic institutions have demonstrated significant impacts of porn consumption on individuals, relationships, and society. Fight the New Drug is not a recovery organization. We are an awareness-raising and educational movement that aims to discuss porn and its impacts on our world openly. Sometimes, discussing porn’s harms includes discussing what porn is specifically being consumed and the specific harms of that content.

Below, we’ll discuss some very explicit terms. These terms are allegedly popular categories on one of the world’s most popular porn sites.

Again, these terms are explicit, so reader discretion is heavily advised, especially if you have had a previous struggle with porn.

Millions of searches every year

Over the last few years, “lesbian” porn has reportedly been the most popular searched-for category among women on Pornhub, but that’s not all—women are also reportedly proportionately 86% more likely to search for “BDSM” content when compared to men, according to the site.

Since 2014, Pornhub (PH) has published its “Year in Review,” an analysis of all the data collected on searches, videos watched, duration on-site, and more. Now, there’s no way for us to cross-check these stats, so we’ll have to take them with a grain of salt.

In 2019—the most recent year they shared site visit metrics—this porn giant received over 115 million site visits a day. That’s a lot of traffic. Consider that just in 2019, nearly 1,300 searches were done every second on PH. And we’re just talking about one porn website—there are hundreds of others out there.

Related: Pornhub Stats Reveal Women Search for More Hardcore Genres Than You Might Expect

Not only are there millions of searches yearly, but there’s also an increasing number of videos uploaded. In 2019, the amount on PH alone hit over 1,471,000 hours (if you do the math, that’s 168 years’ worth).

So, there’s a lot of porn out there. What else is new? All this data is actually pretty useful. It helps us get an idea of how men and women search for and consume porn differently.

Why would that matter? Because talking about the harmful effects of porn means understanding what content is freely available, what is regularly consumed, and what that material might teach consumers about sex and relationships.

Number of female consumers has increased

The percentage of Pornhub visitors identified as women has increased over the past decade.

In 2015, women reportedly represented 24% of the site’s worldwide visitors. That figure was approximately 26% in 2016 and 2017 and rose to 35% in 2021. According to Pornhub’s 2025 Year in Review, women represented 38% of its global visitors—an increase of 14 percentage points since 2015.

Again, that does not mean 38% of all women consume pornography. It means that, according to Pornhub’s own analytics, visitors the platform identified as women represented 38% of its global audience in 2025.

The percentages also differed substantially by country. Pornhub reported that women constituted a majority of its visitors in the Philippines, Colombia, and Argentina in 2025. Women reportedly represented 48% of visitors in Mexico. In the United States, Pornhub attributed 28% of searches to women.

That’s a lot of porn being consumed by women. But how are their habits different than men’s, and how are they the same?

What do men and women search for?

Again, the following terms we’re about to discuss are very explicit and triggering.

The Women | Across the board, women’s top searches are “lesbian” or lesbian-related. This is especially true in recent years. In 2016, for example, there was an increase of 168% in searches for lesbian, and 218% in “female-friendly.” 2018, it was the top-searched term for women. In 2019, women were 104% more likely to search for “lesbian” content. In 2020, Pornhub reported that compared to men, women were 163% more likely to search for “gay BDSM.”

The Men | Men, on the other hand, have consistently stuck to searching MILF, “Japanese,” and “hentai” categories. In 2019, there was a change, and “Japanese” and “amateur” replaced MILF in the top three top searches for men. In 2017, “cheerleader” also increased in popularity among men, with searches for the term increasing by almost 400%.

Visitors of both genders have searched for categories such as “hentai,” “mature,” and other explicit terms. But what about categories involving more aggressive or extreme sexual acts?

Do women want more hardcore content?

In past years, there’s been an increase in the number of searches and consumption of more hardcore porn—largely by women. Past Pornhub reports have documented increases in women’s searches for categories such as “gangbang,” “hardcore,” “rough sex,” and “bondage.”

In 2017, “DP” and “rough sex” were reportedly more popular among women than men. In 2018, Pornhub reported that women were twice as likely as men to watch “gangbang,” “DP,” and—in contrast—“romantic” content.

In 2020, the site reported that women were more than 155% more likely than men to search for “dominant and submissive” and other BDSM-related categories. Women were also reportedly 71% more likely to search for “gangbang” and 63% more likely to search for “double penetration.”

Related: Does the Porn Industry Really Care About Empowering Women?

So what does this mean?

If these stats are accurate and to be believed, the fact women consume hardcore, extreme porn may seem surprising. After all, how is it that the top searched and consumed categories by women are also some of the most aggressive toward women? Some even feature content that would be considered criminal if it were real. In reality, do these videos promote healthy, realistic views of how women should be treated?

But regardless, according to this 2018 study, an estimated 91.5% of men and 60.2% of women consume pornography.Solano, I., Eaton, N. R., & O'Leary, K. D. (2020). Pornography Consumption, Modality and Function in a Large Internet Sample. Journal of sex research, 57(1), 92–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2018.1532488Copy  And research has shown that women are likely just as visually stimulated by porn as men.

Related: 5 Studies that Show How Often Porn Normalizes Violence Against Women

It’s no secret that porn is wildly unrealistic and often incredibly toxic. Yet, survey results also showed that over half of 11 to 16-year-old boys (53%) and over a third of 11 to 16-year-old girls (39%) reported believing that pornography was a realistic depiction of sex, and 44% of boys who watched porn reported that online pornography gave them ideas about the type of sex they wanted to try.Martellozzo, E., Monaghan, A., Adler, J. R., Davidson, J., Leyva, R., & Horvath, M. A. H. (2016). 'I wasn’t sure it was normal to watch it'. London: NSPCC. Retrieved from https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/research-resources/2016/i-wasn-t-sure-it-was-normal-to-watch-itCopy 

Studies show that today’s porn is becoming increasingly aggressive and sells violence as a fantasy, especially toward women.

Consider one 2020 study that entailed a large-scale content analysis and coding of a sample of 7,430 pornographic videos taken from the two most popular free porn sites, Pornhub and XVideos.Fritz, N., Malic, V., Paul, B., & Zhou, Y. (2020). A descriptive analysis of the types, targets, and relative frequency of aggression in mainstream pornography. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(8), 3041-3053. doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01773-0Copy 

The study found physical aggression against women present in 44.3% of Pornhub and 33.9% of XVideos scenes.Fritz, N., Malic, V., Paul, B., & Zhou, Y. (2020). A descriptive analysis of the types, targets, and relative frequency of aggression in mainstream pornography. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(8), 3041-3053. doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01773-0Copy  In fact, the study found that physical aggression was substantially more common in online pornographic videos than verbal aggression. Specifically, women were the target of nearly 97% of all physically aggressive acts in the samples from both sites.

Violence in porn, especially against women, isn’t an exception. This content is consumed by all genders.

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Porn is primarily produced for entertainment, not education. The ideas that porn sells aren’t conducive to a healthy understanding of sex, sexuality, or mutual pleasure. In fact, research confirms that women are the targets of aggression or violence in porn about 97% of the time Fritz, N., Malic, V., Paul, B., & Zhou, Y. (2020). A Descriptive Analysis of the Types, Targets, and Relative Frequency of Aggression in Mainstream Pornography. Archives of sexual behavior, 49(8), 3041–3053. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01773-0Copy  and that only 18.3% of women in popular porn videos (compared to 78% of men) were shown to reach climax.Séguin, L. J., Rodrigue, C., & Lavigne, J. (2018). Consuming Ecstasy: Representations of Male and Female Orgasm in Mainstream Pornography. Journal of sex research, 55(3), 348–356. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2017.1332152Copy  And of course, one of the most consistently popular porn themes is “teen,” which research shows is becoming increasingly popular, and includes the portrayal of underage characters.Walker, A., Makin, D. A., & Morczek, A. L. (2016). Finding Lolita: A comparative analysis of interest in youth-oriented pornography. Sexuality & Culture: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, 20(3), 657–683. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-016-9355-0Copy 

In addition to the abusive behaviors consistently shown in porn, porn often promotes a number of other problematic sexual narratives. Porn sites are full of videos that not only portray but normalize and fetishize incest, unequal power dynamics, and a variety of situations where marginalized or vulnerable people are abused or taken advantage of.

Porn is becoming a source of sexual learning for women

A 2024 study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior focused specifically on women’s pornography use and sexual learning.

Researchers recruited 920 women ages 18–34 through paid Qualtrics online panels. After attention and data-quality checks, 866 participants who lived in the United States, had attended U.S. public schools, and identified as female met the study’s criteria. Of those women, 515 reported pornography use.

Within this particular sample:

• 60% of the women reported using pornography.
• 69% of the women who used pornography said they began during childhood or adolescence.
• 79% of users reported using pornography as a source of information about sexual pleasure.
• Participants generally did not consider pornography their preferred method of learning about sexuality and did not necessarily believe it was a good source of sexual education.

The findings raise an important concern: women may turn to pornography for information they feel they have not received elsewhere—even while recognizing that pornography is not necessarily a healthy or reliable teacher.

What the study does show is that pornography can become part of women’s sexual learning, particularly when it comes to sexual pleasure. That matters because pornography is primarily produced for entertainment and profit—not to teach mutuality, communication, safety, realistic bodies, or consent.

What women say porn teaches about consent and relationships

A 2026 study published in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica explored pornography use among 557 women who visited a Swedish gynecological clinic for contraceptive counseling in 2023.

Seventy-eight percent reported having viewed pornography at least once. In their written responses, some women described pornography as contributing to:

• Unrealistic sexual expectations.
• Harmful gender roles.
• Unattainable beauty standards.
• Negative effects on relational intimacy.
• The normalization of nonconsensual sexual acts.

Researchers also found that pornography users were less likely than non-users to report being explicitly asked for consent during their most recent sexual encounter. Regular users were more likely than non-regular users to report that they had not experienced consent during that encounter.

The study provides something Pornhub’s search rankings cannot: women’s own descriptions of how pornography may influence expectations surrounding sex, bodies, intimacy, gender, and consent.

What does porn teach its consumers?

In one large internet-based sample published in 2020, 91.5% of male participants and 60.2% of female participants reported consuming pornography.

Research has also found that women can experience strong visual responses to sexually explicit material. Pornography consumption is not an issue that only affects men.

But pornography is wildly unrealistic and often toxic. In a survey of 11- to 16-year-olds, 53% of boys and 39% of girls reported believing pornography was a realistic depiction of sex. Among boys who watched porn, 44% said online pornography gave them ideas about the type of sex they wanted to try.

Other research has documented aggression in mainstream pornography. A 2020 content analysis examined 7,430 videos sampled from Pornhub and XVideos. Researchers identified physical aggression against women in 44.3% of sampled Pornhub scenes and 33.9% of sampled XVideos scenes. Women were the targets of nearly 97% of the physically aggressive acts coded across the two samples.

Violence and aggression in porn, especially against women, are not limited to content consumed by men. This content is consumed across genders.

Pornography is primarily produced for entertainment, not education. The ideas it sells are not reliable guides to healthy sex, consent, sexuality, or mutual pleasure. One study examining popular porn videos found that only 18.3% of women, compared with 78% of men, were portrayed as reaching orgasm.

Pornography sites are also filled with content that portrays and fetishizes incest, unequal power dynamics, racial stereotypes, aggression, and scenarios in which marginalized or vulnerable people are abused or taken advantage of.

When this material becomes a source of sexual education, its messages can shape expectations long before consumers have learned to recognize how unrealistic—or harmful—those scripts may be.

So why do more women than men consume extreme content?

There are some explanations or theories that say women search out this hardcore content because it serves as a way to visualize sexual fantasies rooted in sexual blame avoidance or sexual desirability. Other studies have shown that women who have been victims of sexual or psychological violence have a greater likelihood of consuming these more hardcore categories—perhaps as a coping mechanism.

No matter the underlying reason, the fact that women are consuming more content in more hardcore versions is indicative of the overall normalization of porn and its tendency to become an escalating behavior.

Related: Study Shows How Porn Can Complicate Women’s Relationship With Sex

Though men’s and women’s porn consumption may overlap in a few categories, studies show their consumption and acceptance of porn vary. What is true is that no matter a consumer’s gender, porn can be harmful. While preferences for categories may change over the years, porn’s proven harms are consistent.

Porn can shape consumers’ ideas about sex and relationships. It can present aggression as pleasure, inequality as intimacy, and silence as consent. Raising awareness of those messages does not require shaming consumers or pretending every woman has the same experience. It requires honestly examining what pornography depicts, what consumers may learn from it, and what healthier models of intimacy can offer instead.

Regardless of a consumer’s gender, we can challenge the toxic narratives pornography perpetuates, promote healthier conversations about sex and consent, and consider the facts before consuming.

The research is clear—porn can warp consumers’ ideas about sex and relationships. However, the good news is that we can limit those negative effects by raising awareness of this issue, especially among young people. So let’s refocus on healthy relationships and reject the toxic narratives porn perpetuates. Let’s consider the facts before consuming.