Daniel Bergner: What Do Women Want? Adventures In The Science Of Female Desire (Canongate)

Entertaining as it might be to watch women masturbate in an MRI scanner – "popcorn brain!", exclaims one scientist as a woman's neurons light up at climax like a Christmas tree – or to read the sex diaries of patients on a clinical trial for female viagra, it has yet to attain the level of gravitas other realms of biological exploration enjoy.

One could be paranoid and suggest this is because female desire is considered a trivial subject by the male guardians of research fellowships and professorial chairs. It might as easily be explained, however, by the fact that better understanding female sexuality is not a matter of life and death.

That said, as the case histories in this sympathetic, over-written and unabashedly voyeuristic work show, loss of desire for many women is a source of profound misery. It may not lead to their deaths, but it can make life for them and their partner a torment.

Taking Freud's querulous query as his starting point, Bergner has addressed his question: what does a woman want? It's a subject so complex that often women themselves can't fully answer it.

Undeterred, Bergner sets out to illuminate this most elusive of subjects. In so doing, he quickly stumbles on evidence to suggest that women, far from preferring intimacy and security to sex itself, are just as lustful as men.

In trying to reach the truth, Bergner encounters sexologists who use lab rats to illustrate female insatiability, or captive chimps to show how sexually hungry a woman can be. Even a certain type of scorpion, apparently, is hardwired for promiscuity. After sex with one mate, the female won't touch him again for another 48 hours, but offer her a fresh suitor and she's up for it in a mere hour and a half.

Though the conclusions of such experiments are of questionable value, that does not dent Bergner's confidence. What he excitedly demonstrates is that sexologists are increasingly coming to the opinion that women are not only as inherently promiscuous as men, but possibly programmed to be more so. Indeed, as one therapist trying to explain women's loss of desire in long-term relationships puts it, "sometimes I wonder whether it isn't so much about libido as it is about boredom". Hence the phenomenal success of Fifty Shades Of Grey which, we are told, activates "the whole neurochemical soup of wanting".

I doubt many women will be shocked to learn that fidelity is not their default position. Yet, as it is men who over the centuries have decided what is acceptable for women to feel, some quantifiable fact rather than anecdotal evidence, a degree of healthy inquiry rather than the acceptance of age-old preconceptions, is to be welcomed. What is shocking is that it's only in recent decades that this has been openly addressed.

Again, though, that's no surprise. As Bergner writes, the "fairy tale" that men are genetically programmed to be unfaithful, but women are naturally monogamous, has long offered reassurance for those alarmed by the thought of female desire getting out of hand, or of cuckoos inheriting the nest.

While one does not doubt the scrupulousness of Bergner's research, the women on which many studies' conclusions are based could be accused of some bias towards the dissatisfied or the uninhibited. Much of the work he draws on is based on women whose desire has ebbed for their current partner, rather than those who against all the odds described here, retain their passion for each other. When a wife tells him how she is still strongly attracted to her husband, even though she doesn't want sex with him, he thinks she is lying, consciously or not.

A sequel about satisfied women thus seems unlikely. Perhaps he considers that a mythical creature. She's certainly not as much fun to write about.

What Do Women Want? Adventures In The Science Of Female Desire

Daniel Bergner

Canongate, £10.99