Women’s Sexual Desire and Desire Disorders from a Developmental Perspective

Abstract

Research on girls’ and women’s sexual desire has focused primarily on experiences of low desire, rather than positive experiences or high levels of desire. Recent conceptualizations of low desire have incorporated distress as a central feature because not all forms of low sexual desire are problematic for women. Despite a need to rely primarily on cross-sectional data, research indicates that sexual desire does not necessarily dwindle across the life course and that rates of low desire might be fairly consistent over time. A small body of work suggests that girls’ rates of problematic low desire resemble rates found among samples of women, making clear that there is a substantial minority who consistently experience distressing low levels of sexual desire. What emerges from this review is that women’s sexual desire is difficult to capture meaningfully using standardized measures and that understanding this issue depends on more nuanced approaches to assessment and analysis.