Lesbians in the UK in 2024: What do we know?

The Lesbian Project is delighted to publish the third of six reviews of evidence about lesbian wellbeing by researchers Matilda Gosling and Diane Stoianov.

In what we believe to be a unique project of its kind, these researchers have reviewed hundreds of existing pieces of publicly available research in order to pull out information about lesbian wellbeing in the UK and beyond, building a picture of what is already known or hypothesised as well as where the gaps are.

The result is a fascinating series on life for lesbians today; but one which also indicates where future research is needed, as well as illuminating some important methodological issues hampering robust findings in research on lesbians specifically.

Family and relationships

The third of our reviews covers family and relationships.  We found that, for instance:

• The vast majority of young lesbians seem to feel comfortable with their sexual orientation. Their first disclosure is usually to a friend. Young lesbians tend to come out to their mothers before they come out to their fathers. A substantial minority of parents are intolerant or rejecting, especially in non-white and working-class families, but attitudes improve over time. Poor outcomes for lesbians are overstated in the research literature; there are many positive qualities that being a young lesbian helps to foster.

• Lesbians come out, on average, a couple of years later than gay men, and have their first same-sex sexual experience when they are slightly older. The average age at which lesbians come out and have sex for the first time is decreasing over time.

• Women in same-sex relationships having fertility treatment are younger than equivalent heterosexual women. Cycles of donor sperm insemination and IVF are almost evenly split in same-sex couples; they are currently weighted slightly towards the former, but the proportion accessing IVF is increasing rapidly. The odds of a lesbian becoming pregnant in her lifetime is around a fifth of the odds of a heterosexual woman becoming pregnant. IVF leads to a successful birth around a third of the time for same-sex couples, which is substantially higher than for other women. The success rate for donor sperm insemination in same-sex couples is around half the IVF success rate, but it is still more effective than for other women.

Limitations in existing research

Alongside our reviews, we are also publishing a Research Overview, detailing the approach taken by our researchers in compiling the evidence reviews and discussing important limitations they discovered on the robustness of research findings. This document is written to be read alongside our evidence reviews.

As the researchers conclude: “Even the highest-quality evidence – systematic reviews and meta-analyses – are often poor quality when they summarise data about lesbians, due to problems with the underlying studies that inform them.”

They identify several large issues with methodology, quality, and evidence gaps, meaning that it is difficult to draw firm conclusions about lesbians in the UK in many areas.

In future work, the Lesbian Project intends to lobby for better evidence-gathering about lesbian life, as well as commissioning independent research of its own (subject to funding).