Organizational Resources and the Gender Gap in Congregational Lay Leadership

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine how organizational resources affect the gender gap within lay (volunteer) leadership in religious congregations. Using institutional theory as a framework, this study situates congregations within a larger field of organizations competing for legitimacy. Congregations with higher levels of resources—such as wealthier members, better‐educated members, or larger memberships—are more likely to be connected to the core of the field and therefore more likely to have gender egalitarian practices in order to signal their legitimacy. Therefore, I hypothesize that women in resource‐rich congregations will have greater access to volunteer leadership positions than women in congregations that are resource deficient. I analyze 70,942 individuals in 344 religious congregations from the 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Survey using multilevel modeling. I show that religious congregations with more members, better‐educated attenders, and wealthier attenders have smaller gender gaps in volunteer leadership positions. Congregational resources can mitigate the gender gap in lay leadership, and women within resource‐rich organizations have greater access to positions of authority.

Prevalence and Predictors of Substance Use Support Programming Among U.S. Religious Congregations

“…Vanessa N. Torres  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9644-9010 Brad R. Fulton  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5082-4022 Notes 1. The thresholds we used to construct the dichotomous member composition variables correspond with natural cutpoints in the data and they are consistent with previous research on congregations (Dougherty et al, 2020;Ferguson, 2020;Holleman et al, 2022). Additional analyses that shift the percentage thresholds for these variables do not generate significantly different outcomes.…”