Women Scientists That Revolutionized Female Sexuality

Here are six scientists and sex educators who provided valuable inputs to help women achieve orgasm and understand their bodies better.

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard promoted gender equality, denied that sexual pleasure was the fruit of sin, and argued that the blood that truly stained was not that of menstruation but that which was shed during wars. She was a woman far ahead of her time, primarily in her views on the importance of sexual gratification for women. Without fear of the patriarchal authority of the time, this nun made the first descriptions of the female orgasm, studied the sexual organs of male and female, and dared to state that pleasure, far from being the exclusive patrimony of men, was a matter of two.

Miriam Menkin

The scientist became the first person to fertilize a human egg in the laboratory. However, the success of Menkin, a graduate in histology and comparative anatomy, was a long-distance career. Many universities and laboratories did not admit women in her time, and others had a very small quota for them to participate as researchers. In 1994, alongside Dr. John Rock, Menkin announced that they completed a series of in vitro fertilization (IVF) experiments in the journal Science after six years of trying the procedure in their laboratory at the Free Hospital for Women in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Helen O'Connell

Helen O'Connell was not only the first Australian to specialize in urology. She also described the complete anatomy of the clitoris with all its elements in 1998. The doctor included the corpus cavernous as part of the pyramidal structure and linked its relationships with the urethra and vagina in her description. The only human organ designed for pleasure has been her obsession. The doctor has focused much of her research on studying the famous G-spot.

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Helen S. Kaplan

In 1980, Kaplan began to talk about the Triphasic Model of human sexual response. Baptized with the name of its creator, the sexologist H. Kaplan, it is based on studying the different phases of the human sexual response in three periods divided into desire, arousal, orgasm, and resolution. With this theory, she emphasizes the influence of the psychological aspect on the sexual experience. She also explained the desire functions as the stimulus before genital contact. Her contribution expanded the effectiveness of sex therapy, giving greater importance to the psychological aspects.

Shere Hite

The sex educator debunked myths about the female orgasm. For example, she explained that masturbation and the role of the clitoris are vital steps to reaching climax. Her research was crucial for sex therapy and female sexuality. Hite interviewed 3000 women and revealed that most don't orgasm from intercourse. As Psychology Today explains, "The Hite Report told women that it was normal to not orgasm during intercourse and that, instead, the vast majority of women need direct clitoral stimulation to orgasm."

Virginia E. Johnson

Virginia's field of research was physiology and sex therapy. She is considered the first woman to study sexual dysfunctions scientifically. Her efforts in her lab, analyzing heart rate and brain activity during sexual activity, broadened humanity's understanding of sexual pleasure and dysfunction. But it is also worth noting that thanks to her contributions, sexual therapy, and couples’ therapy gained greater respectability in the clinical field.