It’s tough being a well-educated woman with a career.
Last year we learned that women with high IQs don’t get married – and that men would prefer to marry their secretary rather than their peer.
This year, we learned that if you make more than $30,000 per year, work 35 hours a week or more outside the home or have a university-level (or higher) education you are more likely to cheat and get divorced, less likely to have children, unable to keep house, and somehow able to make your husband physically ill.
But this year also dealt smart women an even more gutting blow: A Canadian study found that smart women are also less likely to have orgasms during sex.
The study, published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, found that better-educated women are more likely to have low sex drives and less likely to climax if they can muster the energy to get started. Some 48 percent of university-educated women report problems compared with 31 percent of high-school grads.
It’s not the first time that researchers have correlated the inability to orgasm with advanced education: Even when I’d seek out some kinky light reading in my graduate school library, I’d find dire news on the topic. Sex in America: A Definitive Study (1994) revealed that while women like me were more open to inventive sexual positions, masturbation, and experimentation, orgasms weren’t always on the horizon. Not only was I unmarriageable, but I was also fairly unlikely to enjoy the hard-won lovin’ I could find.
Are smart women too uptight to enjoy sex? Do we overthink the primal act until achieving orgasm is impossible? Or are we just more honest about our sex lives?
In my new book, “Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women,” I coined an acronym for all of us smart, successful single gals: SWANS – Strong Women Achievers, No Spouse. After reading these surveys, I wondered if we should amend that to “Strong Women Achievers, No Sex.”
Before you quit your job, put your hair in rollers, and reinvent yourself as a sexy dumb honey, read on. I promise it gets better. Guys do make passes at girls who wear glasses.
