Rethinking Religious Gender Differences: The Case of Elite Women

Abstract

Decades of research has suggested that women are much more religious than men. Yet our survey of 107 women and 362 men who are alumni of the White House Fellows program finds that elite women are less likely than elite men to report religion as being important to their lives. When focusing on the fellows who are women, we find that obtaining a graduate degree from a top university, being highly committed to one's work, and being recognized for success are all associated with a lower likelihood of rating religion as important. We elucidate some of these findings with analyses of indepth interviews. We suggest that aspiring women may not benefit from religion the same way men do and that religion often fails to provide similar levels of support for elite women as for elite men. We conclude by arguing for finer-grained measures of professional accomplishment and social standing to better understand gender differences in religion.

The Gender Pray Gap: Wage Labor and the Religiosity of High-Earning Women and Men

“…Identity validation fits logically with high-earning men demonstrating higher levels of religious involvement and commitment than low-earning men: high-earning men could be expected to receive more validation as successful breadwinners with leadership potential in religious communities that value traditional family values, soft patriarchy, and "godly masculinity" (Gallagher 2003;Gerber 2015;hoffmann and Bartkowski 2008). Conversely, high-earning women might be perceived as overly self-oriented and insufficiently family-oriented in the same congregations (Edgell 2006;hall et al 2012;hastings and Lindsay 2013). As suggested by intersectionality theory (Collins 2000;McCall 2005) and research that shows black Protestants have liberal attitudes toward women in the workforce (Schnabel 2016), validation patterns could vary by race.…”

“…In this article, rather than limit exploration to between-gender differences alone, I follow Cornwall's (2009) and Avishai, Jafar, and Rinaldo's (2015) calls to consider gender processes and aspects of intersectionality as an important complement to previous explanations for gender differences. This study underscores the importance of exploring differences among women and among men to better understand the differences between them. I focus primarily on one aspect of intersectionality-the intersection of gender, earnings, and religion-to extend previous research indicating the importance of class-related processes for contextualizing gender differences in religiosity (Collett and Lizardo 2009;hastings and Lindsay 2013). I use earned income to examine how religiosity varies within gender, how this affects differences across genders, and whether gender differences are smaller among high earners.…”

How Religious Are American Women and Men? Gender Differences and Similarities

“…Some research on "universal" gender differences in religiosity has argued that biology leads women to be innately more religious than men (Miller and Stark 2002;Stark 2002). Although gender differences in religiosity are a consistent finding, more recent studies have highlighted the importance of avoiding universal claims and recognizing complexity (e.g., Cornwall 2009;Hastings and Lindsay 2013;Roth and Kroll 2007;Schnabel 2014;Sullins 2006).…”

Does Religion Suppress Gender Differences in Values? A Cross-National Examination

“…The literature is not yet settled, but explanations that emphasize social structure, status, and gendered norms and expectations seem promising Francis and Wilcox 1998;Hastings and Lindsay 2013;Norris and Inglehart 2008;Schnabel 2016b;de Vaus and McAllister 1987) and are consistent with recent findings about how gender differences may vary across religious groups (Hackett et al 2016;Schnabel 2015;Schnabel et al 2018). In fact, gender differences in religion may be a function of the same types of social processes-such as structural disadvantage, gender socialization, and gender-typing of social institutions-that produce gender differences in politics.…”