The Myth That Women Don't Watch Porn (Data Says Otherwise)

The counts, up front

Women do watch porn. Pornhub's 2018 review put women at 30% of its Indian visitors (Business Today) and its 2019 numbers at 32% worldwide (Hypebeast). A US sample of 1,392 adults found 60.2% of women had used porn in the past month (J Sex Res, 2020), and a Mumbai survey of 150 women put it near 59%.

Last reviewed 05 Oct 2026 by Kavya Iyer, Team MyMuse.

This article is for information and is not medical advice.

Do women watch porn? What the counts actually say

Yes, in numbers that stopped being surprising a decade ago. The difficulty is that "watch porn" covers at least four separate questions, and the honest answer changes depending on which one is being asked: ever, in the past month, alone or with someone, and whether it feels like a problem. The table keeps those apart, with the sample, the country and the year attached to every percentage. Two of the rows come from one commercial website's own traffic logs, a site that has been blocked in India since 2018; the rest come from academic samples. They are not the same kind of evidence and should not be read as one.

Measure	Women	Men	Sample, country, year
Share of site visitors	30%	70%	Pornhub traffic, India, 2018
Share of site visitors	32%	Not reported	Pornhub traffic, worldwide, 2019
Used porn in the past month	60.2%	91.5%	1,392 adults, US, 2020
View on their own	31.6%	76.8%	1,291 adults in relationships, US, 2011
Sometimes view with a partner	44.8%	44.8%	Same sample, US, 2011
Had viewed online	About 59%	Not measured	150 women aged 18 to 25, Mumbai, 2017
Agree they are addicted to porn	3%	11%	2,075 adults, US, 2019

Sources for every row are linked in the sections that follow.

How many Indian women watch porn?

The only India-wide figure anyone quotes is Pornhub's own, and it is worth knowing what it counts. In December 2018 the company reported India as its third-largest source of traffic, behind the United States and the United Kingdom, with women making up 30% of Indian visitors and the top search category being "Indian" (Business Today). A year later India had dropped to fifteenth, which press coverage attributed partly to the government blocking access to certain adult websites, while female viewership in India rose by three points and 95% of visits came from phones (DESIblitz). One Indian academic sample exists and it is narrow: 150 women aged 18 to 25 in Mumbai, recruited by email and WhatsApp, of whom roughly 41% had not viewed porn online, leaving about 59% who had (Indian Journal of Mental Health, 2017).

What do women say they watch, and how?

Less video than the stereotype assumes, and more of it with someone else in the room. In the US sample of 1,392 adults, women were much more likely than men to consume written pornography (J Sex Res, 2020). A random sample of 1,291 American adults in relationships found that 76.8% of men viewed on their own against 31.6% of women, while nearly half of both, 44.8%, sometimes viewed with a partner (Arch Sex Behav, 2011). A representative Danish sample of 688 adults aged 18 to 30 found women using porn more often with a regular sexual partner than men did, and men preferring a wider range of explicit material, with women leaning to the softer end (Arch Sex Behav, 2006). Shared viewing gets its own treatment in the couples guide.

Why does the myth survive?

Partly because the numbers were never as new as they sound. An analysis of US women across four decades, 1973 to 2010, with a combined sample of 18,225, found consumption associated with being younger, less religious and non-White, and found little support for the idea that technology had produced a steady year-on-year rise in the share of women consuming it (Arch Sex Behav, 2013). Women were already watching before anyone was counting; what changed was the counting. The other half of the answer is that saying so out loud still costs something. In the Mumbai sample, 14.7% of the women said they felt ashamed afterwards and 8% said they felt sick or depressed, self-reports rather than diagnoses (Indian Journal of Mental Health, 2017). Silence reads as absence, and it is not. The guilt-free guide to self-pleasure sits with that part.

Do women feel addicted at the same rate as men?

No, and the gap is wide. In a nationally representative US survey of 2,075 adults, 11% of men and 3% of women gave some level of agreement with the statement "I am addicted to pornography" (J Behav Addict, 2019). That is self-described, not diagnosed, and the two are genuinely different things. What the number does usefully show is that most people who use porn, women included, do not experience it as a problem. If frequency rather than content is the part that bothers you, what psychologists actually say about porn addiction goes through the argument properly.

Where does MyMuse fit, and what we do not make?

Worth saying plainly, because a fair number of people land here by typing the brand name next to the word porn: MyMuse does not make, host or sell any of it. We make personal massagers, lubricants and intimacy products. This page exists because the assumption sitting behind "women don't watch porn" is the same one sitting behind "women don't buy massagers", and the second is wrong for the same reasons. If you came looking for something else, the women's massager guide and the clitoral massager guide are the useful pages, and the numbness and addiction myth page covers the worry people have about using one often.

Where a lot of women start

Pulse is the usual first pick: a full body massager in platinum-grade body-safe silicone, 110 mm long, 50 g, with five vibration speeds and two pulsing patterns. One customer called it "surely a beginner friendly tool".

Meet Your Match

Key takeaways

Pornhub counted women as 30% of its Indian visitors in 2018 and 32% of visitors worldwide in 2019.
In a US sample of 1,392 adults, 60.2% of women had used porn in the past month.
Women are likelier than men to read written porn and to view with a partner, less likely to view alone.
3% of women and 11% of men in a representative US survey agreed they were addicted to porn.

Frequently asked questions

Do women watch porn?

Yes. Pornhub reported women as 30% of its Indian visitors in 2018 and 32% of visitors worldwide in 2019. In a US sample of 1,392 adults, 60.2% of women said they had used porn in the past month, against 91.5% of men.

How many women in India watch porn?

There is no national survey. Pornhub's own 2018 reporting put women at 30% of its Indian visitors. The one Indian academic sample, 150 women aged 18 to 25 in Mumbai in 2017, found about 59% had viewed porn online. That is a small convenience sample, not a figure for Indian women generally.

Do women watch porn with their partners?

Often, yes. In a random sample of 1,291 US adults in relationships, 44.8% of both men and women said they sometimes viewed with a partner, while only 31.6% of women viewed alone against 76.8% of men. A Danish sample found women using porn with a regular partner more often than men did.

Are women as likely as men to feel addicted to porn?

No. In a nationally representative US survey of 2,075 adults, 3% of women and 11% of men agreed to some degree that they were addicted to pornography. Those are self-descriptions rather than clinical diagnoses, and most people who use porn, of any gender, do not report distress about it.