New Australian book about women's sexual attitudes show interesting sexual habits

ONE in five women have featured in a home-made sex tape, a new survey of women's attitudes to sex has found.

But judging by some of the 2000 responses author Joan Sauers received to her online study exploring the sex lives of Australian women, many now regret it. "It was exciting when we were doing it. When I saw the tape I just felt fat," one 30-year-old teacher from Victoria wrote.

Ms Sauers's book, Sex Lives of Australian Women, to be released tomorrow, covers the gamut of emotions and experiences including sexual fantasies, the pros and cons of threesomes, the changing face of sex as women get older, and, of course, orgasms.

Women contributed anonymously to the online survey apart from their age, state and occupation, and while some of the findings appear skewed towards a younger, more internet-savvy population (one in four say they look at pornography at least once a month, for instance), it is the honesty of their responses that is striking, Ms Sauers says.

"I think women do talk to each other more than men do about their sex lives, but there are the really personal things we don't even tell our best friends, and I think this is where the anonymity of this survey provides important material," she says. "It became a place where women could vent about what was right and wrong about their sex life, and I got 7000 pages of material."

Ms Sauers, who two years ago wrote Sex Lives of Australian Teenagers using a similar online survey, says there are two big surprises in the results.

"The first was that younger women in their 20s felt the most guilt about cheating on their partner while older women tended to be more forgiving of themselves," she says. "I think it shows the older we get, the more complicated our sense of moral relativism becomes.

"And second, I was stunned to find the number of women who still don't know it's illegal to be forced to have sex by their husband. They still have this sense of debt that part of the marriage vows include having sex even if they desperately don't want to."

The book covers sexual fantasies and finds a liaison with another woman is the prevailing imaginary encounter for 57 per cent of the women surveyed.