The share of women who reported that their sexual partners were not exclusively men increased from 8% to 35%.

Something is changing in the way young women understand and describe their sexuality. Over the past 15 years, exclusive heterosexuality has steadily declined among Generation Z women. By contrast, the corresponding shift among young men has been far less pronounced.

According to a recent Gallup survey discussed by The Conversation, the proportion of people who identify as LGBTQ+ has more than doubled since 2012, with the highest rates recorded among Generation Z women—those born between 1997 and 2012. In 2023, 28.5% of Gen Z women identified as LGBTQ+, compared with 10.6% of men in the same generation. The proportion of women who reported that their sexual partners were not exclusively men rose from 8% to 35%.

As researchers studying sexuality, gender, and the transition to adulthood, we have been tracking these trends since 2011 through the Human Sexualities Research Lab, alongside our former colleague Sarah R. Young. The national picture closely reflects what our interdisciplinary team—made up of experts in psychology, social work, and gender studies—has documented for more than a decade.

In our most recent study, we examined whether young women and young men were changing in similar ways across three dimensions of sexual orientation: sexual attraction (the gender or genders a person is attracted to), sexual behavior (the people with whom they have sexual relationships or experiences), and sexual identity (how individuals describe their own sexual orientation). Our findings suggest they are not. The gender gap extends beyond LGBTQ+ identification and also reflects changing boundaries around heterosexuality itself.

Women Are Moving Away from Exclusive Heterosexuality

Sexual identity is only one aspect of sexual orientation. People also differ in terms of whom they are attracted to and with whom they have sexual relationships.

In a study currently under peer review, our research team analyzed 15 years of data from more than 10,000 undergraduate students attending public universities across New York State between 2011 and 2026. We also examined more than 700 open-ended responses collected in 2024 and 2025, in which students explained why they chose a particular sexual identity label.

Our research found that, over this 15-year period, young women became increasingly less likely to report being exclusively attracted to men. In 2011, approximately 22% of female students said their attraction was not limited exclusively to men. By 2026, that figure had nearly doubled, reaching almost 50%.

A similar trend emerged in both sexual behavior and sexual identity. The proportion of women who reported that their sexual partners were not exclusively men increased from 8% to 35%, while the share of women who did not identify as exclusively heterosexual rose from 18% to 44%. These patterns were consistent across all racial groups included in the study.

Participants were asked to rate their sexual attraction on a scale ranging from exclusive attraction to the other sex (women attracted only to men and men attracted only to women) to exclusive attraction to the same sex (women attracted only to women and men attracted only to men).

Among young women, the shift was not primarily a movement from exclusive attraction to men toward exclusive attraction to women. Instead, responses became more widely distributed across the entire spectrum—from «mostly attracted to men" to «mostly attracted to women." The most significant change was the declining proportion of women who reported being exclusively attracted to men.