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.

“"In The Pleasure Gap , Katharine Rowland takes on a feminist issue that has not received the attention it deserves: the inequality between women and men in the fraught and intimate area of sexual pleasure. Well-written and deeply researched, this book illuminates a topic that has profound implications for women's personal happiness and well-being."-- Elaine Tyler May, author of America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation”

"A joy to read, and an important conversation about our right to pleasure: how we fake and perform, instead of value our actual sensations, cutting ourselves off from our own sexual enjoyment, which is our birthright. No one should deny themselves pleasure, nor the pleasure of this book, and its inevitable aftermath in their lives."--Julie Holland, author of Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You're Taking, the Sleep You're Missing, the Sex You're Not Having, and What's Really Making You Crazy
"If I could force everyone to read this book, I would. All of us, especially men who are confused about their partners' sexual response, need it, and need it now."--Eric Berkowitz, author of Sex and Punishment: Four Hundred Years of Judging Desire
"In The Pleasure Gap, Katharine Rowland takes on a feminist issue that has not received the attention it deserves: the inequality between women and men in the fraught and intimate area of sexual pleasure. Well-written and deeply researched, this book illuminates a topic that has profound implications for women's personal happiness and well-being."--Elaine Tyler May, author of America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation
"In The Pleasure Gap, Katherine Rowland takes a candid and unflinching look at the factors that drive sexual desire deficits for cis, heterosexual women. Sweeping away the cobwebs of dusty explanations for women's 'loss of sexual drive.' ... She closes the deal with the reader by offering frank insights into ways to close the gap, with a welcome focus on how we can mute the voices of our society and listen to our own bodies and minds."--Emily Willingham, coauthor of The Informed Parent: A Science-Based Resource for Your Child's First Four Years
"Tasteful and open-minded . . . Rowland skillfully synthesizes many different ideas and approaches, and encourages women to embrace a broader understanding of their own sexual desire as an ongoing process of self-discovery and self-assertion."--Publishers Weekly

Katherine Rowland was previously the publisher of Guernica. She was a National Science Foundation fellow in medical anthropology at Columbia University and an assistant to a clinical sex therapist at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Her writing has been featured in Nature, the Financial Times, Green Futures, the Guardian, the Independent, Aeon, Psychology Today and elsewhere. Rowland lives in New York.

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.

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