The religiosity gender gap in 14 diverse societies

Abstract

Scholars of religion have long sought to explain the persistent finding that women tend to report greater religiosity than men. However, the size of this 'gender gap' may depend on the measure of religiosity employed, the religious tradition being sampled, and socio-demographic factors.Here, we conduct a systematic cross-cultural investigation into the prevalence of, and explanations for, the religiosity gender gap in 2,002 individuals from 14 diverse societies.While variation exists across societies, women in general indicate greater mental commitment to (i.e. thinking and worrying more about) their community's moralistic god, more frequent participation in rituals for their community's moralistic god, and more frequent prayer. While we find that the gender gap extends beyond the Christian world, no such difference was seen in religious commitment towards more local gods, to which men tend to show greater commitment. Tentative support is provided for explanations relating gender differences in religiosity to lower formal education and greater mentalising among women, however an explanation for greater religious commitment to local gods among men remains elusive.Nevertheless, our data suggest that the moralising gods of some contemporary world religions, unlike local deities and traditions, have evolved in ways that make them more appealing to women.

Religiousness worldwide: translation of the Duke University Religion Index into 20 languages and validation across 27 nations

“…In a large prior meta-analysis of survey studies that included personality and religiosity variables, gender was not found to be a consistent predictor of religiosity (Saroglou, 2010), but our results suggest that this may be truer in Western countries. Cultural context and the type of religious involvement are important in unpacking this question, as seen in the World Values Survey (Sullins, 2006;Vardy et al, 2022). Sullins (2006) reported that the organizational structure of religious institutions can explain why women report less religious involvement in Muslim and Orthodox Jewish contexts, where they are excluded from many practices.…”

“…Outside places with exclusionary structures, however, our results match those of many prior studies (e.g., Argyle & Beit-Hallahmi, 2013;Sullins, 2006) in finding that women report higher religious involvement in the countries where a difference is observed. The reasons for this are likely multi-faceted, encompassing aspects of the religious institutions and how participation is constructed, of the presence or lack of other social and economic opportunities, of survey methodology and response patterns (Vardy et al, 2022;Sullins, 2006), and even of the local conceptualization of God (Vardy et al, 2022).…”

“…Women have been assumed to be more religious than men (Argyle & Beit-Hallahmi, 2013), but the religion and the activity may play a role (Vardy et al, 2022). Women identify as more religious in Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist, but not Jewish contexts, and engage in more religious activities in Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist, but not Muslim or Jewish contexts (Sullins, 2006).…”

Demographic and socioeconomic predictors of religious/spiritual beliefs and behaviours in a prospective cohort study (ALSPAC) in Southwest England: Results from the offspring generation

“…As religiosity is generally known to be higher in females, both cross-culturally 28 and as reported in ALSPAC specifically 24 , we examined whether these sociodemographic exposures differed by sex, by including an interaction between sex and each exposure. Given that all YPs were approximately the same age (28 years), we did not explore interactions between age and the exposures.…”

Individual-level changes in religious/spiritual beliefs and behaviours over three decades in the parental generation of the ALSPAC cohort, UK

“…First, this population reflects a very thin slice of human diversity -namely British, predominantly White, and primarily Christian -and patterns reported here may not generalise to other countries, cultures, ethnicities, religions or populations. For instance, although a female RSBB bias is found in many Western, Christian countries, this pattern is not universal, and likely depends on sociodemographic factors, the RSBB measure assessed, and other cultural differences (Vardy et al 2022). Understanding how and why RSBB changes over the lifespan in a diverse range of societies is a key area for future research.…”