Why surveys asking people how many partners they've had rarely add up
In a 2007 American survey, men's median count of female partners came out at seven, while women's median count of male partners was four. Both groups cannot be fully right, and researchers suspect some mix of boasting, modesty and a small minority with very high numbers skews almost every such tally.
Measuring sexual behaviour is awkward because people have strong reasons to shade their answers, trimming or inflating them depending on local taboos. The gap in that 2007 national survey has three candidate explanations: men overstating, women understating, or a handful of women with far more partners than their peers pulling the numbers apart. Around 29 percent of men and 9 percent of women in it claimed more than 15 partners. Epidemiologists care because infections tend to move through a small group with many more partners than average.
International league tables are shakier still, and they are often paid for by condom brands. A Durex study run in 2006 and published in 2009 put Austrian men on top with an average of 29.3 partners and New Zealand women highest among females at 20.4, the only country where women outscored men. Durex's 2005 global survey gave a worldwide average of nine, with Turkey near 14.5 and India at 3. A 2008 American university study instead crowned Finland in the industrialised world and Britain among the large Western nations, linking the British result to fading religious objections, equal pay and a heavily sexualised popular culture. Yet a 2006 review spanning 59 countries found that partner numbers did not predict sexual health; poverty and mobility mattered far more.
Judgement has its own history. The word slut has carried its insulting sense since at least 1450, and John Webster's 1612 play The White Devil leaned on older slurs such as strumpet. Feminists have long argued that women pay a steeper price for the same conduct, pointing to approving male labels like stud. Some recent work complicates that picture: studies of Norwegian students in 2023 and of 11 countries across five continents in 2025 found little sign of a double standard.
Field experiments in 1978 and 1982 showed a starker split. Most men approached by a stranger of average looks with a direct offer said yes, whereas not a single woman accepted the equivalent offer, and many reacted with shock.
Source: Promiscuity
