Orgasm gap: how Hollywood and science neglected female pleasure

Emma Thompson is right - more women are missing out on orgasms. Why?

Hollywood sex scenes tend to follow a predictable formula: hot, passionate and rarely anything short of euphoric. So the basis of Emma Thompson's new film, Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, in which she plays a widowed teacher who hires a male escort in the hope of having her first orgasm late in life, is seen as truly boundary-pushing.

But while films do not tend to depict women looking tense, frustrated or simply a bit bored during sex, evidence suggests that in real-life many women share the experience of Thompson's character. Fifteen percent of women have never had an orgasm," Thompson told ITV's Lorraine Kelly, in a publicity interview this week, a figure that experts say is plausible".