A new study has found that women who are sexually active when they enter middle age continue to engage sexually as they grow older. The study, conducted by doctors at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, is attempting to quash the perception that women lose interest in sex as they age.
“There’s this popular public perception that as women age, sex becomes unimportant, and that women just stop having sex as they get older,” lead author Dr. Holly Thomas said. “From our study, it looks like most women continue to have sex during midlife,” she said.
More and more women are being diagnosed as sexually dysfunctional, even though Dr. Thomas and her colleagues argue that this diagnosis could be detrimental for women. Doctors use a test called the Female Sexual Index to determine a woman’s sexual function, with participants being tasked with answering questions regarding orgasm, vaginal lubrication, and pain during intercourse.
For the study, 354 middle-aged and older Pittsburgh women who reported being sexually active were asked to take a test four years later. When the women took the test four years later, it was found that more than 85 percent of women reported remaining sexually active.
Nevertheless, those same women generally scored low on the sexual-function index, with an average score of 22.3- well below the cut off of 26.55, which is considered sexually dysfunctional.
The authors were surprised to find that sexual function, as measured by the index, failed to predict whether the women continued to have sex.
These findings have lead the authors of the report to theorize that the Female Sexual Index “may be labeling women as dysfunctional when women don’t have a problem.”
Dr. Thomas and her colleagues hope that the findings in this study could potentially lead to an overhaul of the Female Sexual Index, to prevent further women from being misdiagnosed.
Evan Hopkins is a 24 year old writer operating out of Atlanta, GA. When he isn’t writing, he enjoys reading books, drinking coffee, and folk music.