NEW YORK — Women have surged as a percentage of the porn audience in the past two years, growing 25.1 percent worldwide and 24.2 percent in the U.S.
But the content they look for most intensely is largely underproduced, according to a new study by xHamster.
The study was conducted to help guide new women directors as they begin to apply for over $25,000 in awards and grants from the xHamster for Women Fund, the company said.
"Women enjoy porn as much as men do but have a much harder time finding stuff they like," said Alex Hawkins, vice president of xHamster. "Because there isn't much content created specifically for women consumers, women often end up looking at the same content as men by default, which means some popularity rankings can be misleading.
“To better understand what women really want, we looked for points of diversion — either where women were overrepresented or underrepresented in terms of engagement on our site."
The study used pageviews, rather than the more common visits or clicks, to better determine the degree of engagement by women in a particular category.
Women average 18 percent of pageviews across xHamster as a whole but certain categories of video showed much higher engagement from women, including "cunnilingus" (where women make up 37.8 percent of pageviews), "vibrators" (31.3 percent), "fingering" (30 percent), "lesbians" (26.2 percent) and "rough sex" (25.9 percent). Meanwhile, major porn categories like "facials" score very poorly with women (12.6 percent).
The study also ranked the Top 100 US search terms for women, and compared those with men. While "mom" topped the list at No. 1 for both, other searches such as "spanking" showed large discrepancies (sixth most popular search term for women, 98th for men).
But content that appeals specifically to women is drastically underproduced, notes Hawkins. For example, there are 27 times the number of videos in "facials" category as there are in "eating pussy."
"Women don't need softer content, they just need content that's relevant to them," Hawkins said. "Unfortunately, the majority of the industry doesn't believe women are a viable market, and so doesn't produce anything for women. We created the xHamster for Women Fund because we need more women filmmakers making porn for women — and we need it to be financially viable."
The xHamster for Women Fund will provide over $25,000 in grants and awards to women filmmakers, creating films for women. Submissions opened Sept. 1.
For more information on the study, or for questions about the xHamster for Women Fund, contact Alex Hawkins at alex.hawkins@xhamster.com.
