On Wednesday, December 13, the new edition of the study “Context of sexualities in France” carried out by the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) and around a hundred investigators from the Ipsos institute was published. Its last edition dated from 2006 and many things have changed in eighteen years: we learn, among other things, that French men have on average twice as many sexual partners as French women over the course of their lives and that more than a third of respondents under 40 have already met one of their partners online.
Another fact attracts attention: it concerns the acceptance of homosexuality in France. In the first study, published in 2007 – six years before the adoption of the law authorizing same-sex marriage – only 47% of men and 59% of women believed that homosexuality was a sexuality like any other. Their numbers have increased by about ten points each, but remain surprisingly low. In other words, almost one in two men and one in three women do not consider that homosexuality is a sexuality like any other today.
These figures are all the more astonishing given that, at the same time, the number of sexual relations between people of the same sex has increased significantly. Thus, in 2023, 8.4% of women and 7.5% of men surveyed declare having had at least one partner of the same sex (compared to 4 and 4.1% respectively in 2006). These proportions increase to 14.8% for women and 9.3% for men if we only look at respondents aged 18 to 29. A significant share which would be underestimated according to Inserm. To avoid a declarative bias, the authors of the study specify that “more than one woman in five (22.6%) and one man in seven (14.5%) are “not strictly heterosexual, in the sense where they report either an attraction, or practices, or an identity that is not heterosexual.”
Sexual activity among young people is declining
Another significant data concerns the sexual activity of the French and particularly of single people aged under 30. In 2006, approximately 58.2% of young single women and almost 70% of young single men reported having had at least one sexual intercourse in the last twelve months. This share drops to 51.2% for women, 51.6% for men.
Concerning the differential between the sexual activity of men and women, the study does not specify whether it is a real decline or a catch-up effect. One thing is certain, on average, sexual activity is declining for all French people, even if “the vast majority of the population has had sexual activity during the year, including at the most advanced ages” points out the institute.