Study finds Gen Z women are shifting away from exclusive heterosexuality

A new study suggests that Gen Z women are moving away from exclusive heterosexuality at a faster pace than men of the same age group, with the trend visible across sexual attraction, sexual behaviour and self-identification.

The research, published on 7 July by The Conversation, examined 15 years of responses from more than 10,000 public university undergraduates in New York State, collected between 2011 and 2026.

Researchers in The Conversation’s Human Sexualities Research Lab have been tracking these patterns since 2011. In their latest analysis, they asked whether “young women and men are changing in similar ways across three measures of sexual orientation”. Their answer was no.

“Our findings suggest they are not,” the report says. It adds: “In our analysis, this gender gap is not only about who claims an LGBTQ+ identity; it is also about how the boundaries of heterosexuality are changing.”

The report also draws on a Gallup poll from 2023, which found that Gen Z women are almost three times more likely than Gen Z men to identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community. That poll said 28.5 percent of Gen Z women identified as LGBTQ+ in 2023, compared with 10.6 percent of men. It also found that the share of people identifying as LGBTQ+ had more than doubled since 2012.

To better understand how students described their identities, the researchers also reviewed more than 700 responses from students in 2024 and 2025 explaining why they chose their sexual identities.

Across the full 15-year period, the study found that women became steadily less likely to report exclusive attraction to men. In 2011, 22 percent of the women surveyed said their attraction was not exclusively to men; by 2026, that figure had risen to almost 50 percent.

Patterns in behaviour moved in the same direction. Around eight percent of women said they did not exclusively have male sexual partners in 2011, compared with 35 percent in 2026. The share identifying as something other than heterosexual rose from 18 percent to 44 percent over the same period.

The report says the figures were “broadly consistent across racial groups”.

Men in the same demographic did not show a comparable shift. Instead, they remained concentrated in exclusive heterosexuality. The share of men reporting attraction not exclusively to women fell slightly, from around 14 percent in 2011 to 13 percent in 2026.

The study adds to a wider body of research suggesting that younger people, and especially young women, are more likely than older generations to identify as LGBTQ+. For LGBTQ+ communities, findings like these can help explain changing patterns of identity and visibility, even where legal rights and social acceptance remain uneven.

https://en-gb.facebook.com/pinknews/