Well, what you’re really asking is “Why are people religious?” with the addendum asking “Would that trait be more dominant in women than men?”  And that doesn’t really get answered here.  After all, I can attend church without being religious (I’ve done it for years).  And I can be “spiritual” without belonging to any single cult or faith.

There’s been speculation about a “God gene” that leaves us more prone to accepting irrational answers to difficult questions.  Lots of nature versus nurture arguments about what makes a person a <strike>sucker</strike> believer.  And since the main goal in asking that question is “How can I encourage / discourage it?” I think you’re probably barking up the wrong tree if you’re even looking at some sort of gender question.  Even if you could show a 7 point faith gap in the genders, I’m not sure if you could leverage that into encouraging more atheism.  Not unless you thought you could make more chicks think like dudes.

An example of a less thoughtful explanation would be from Hitchens, who has said that he thinks women are slightly more religious because they are mothers.

My first thought was actually traditional marriage. I.e., women would be more likely than men to adopt their spouse’s religion or political party and then identify that way. So an apolitical, religiously apathetic woman gets married to a religious Republican, and suddenly she falls out of the “meh” categories into the committed ones. Men don’t really have any pressure to adapt to their wife’s opinions. An apolitical, religiously apathetic man isn’t going to be trying to deconvert his wife from whatever her pre-existing opinions might have been, but a politically and religiously active man would very likely do the opposite. (Especially the religious part…)

Men are encouraged to make a show at being part of the community, while Women are encouraged to actually do the heavy lifting of supporting that community (The bake sale angle you hit on). But in our unguarded, poll-taking moments, Men don’t have to put up a show, they can just answer naturally. What this poll, in effect, really shows is that 7% of men don’t really pull their weight in the traditional community, they just make an appearance., then go hang out with the other dumb asses over by the grill at the church picnic.

An example of a less thoughtful explanation would be from Hitchens, who has said that he thinks women are slightly more religious because they are mothers.

Total logical disconnect, anybody?  He might as well have said that women are more religious because they tend to wear skirts (bolstering his argument by pointing out the Scottish).

You could read the post, Zif. It doesn’t seem you got around to the explanation I proffered, which is that women aren’t more religious so much as they just seem to have more community affiliations, and religion is just one of those.

I hope that Hitchens comment was a joke.  Are women only 9% more likely to be mothers than men in his eyes?

Seriously, that’s just another one in a long line of Hitchens claiming that the uterus and its functions make women stupider, more gullible, less clever, and generally less awesome than men.  He can go fuck himself, seriously.

You could read the post, Zif. It doesn’t seem you got around to the explanation I proffered, which is that women aren’t more religious so much as they just seem to have more community affiliations, and religion is just one of those.

Well, the question was of religious affiliation.  Stephanie Zvan notes that women are more prone to affiliations in general.  That tackles why a woman would be a member of a church rather than a non-affiliated spiritualist.

But when you asked “Are women more likely to be stupid/gullible?” I’m assuming you think it’s the religion aspect that is stupid, not the club aspect.

Concluding that “women are more likely to join clubs” answers why you’ve got more women affiliated with churches.

But the question, “Are women more likely to be spiritual(/stupid/gullible)?” is still up in the air.  I don’t think it matters.  The cure for religion isn’t going to be found in gender roles.

I’ve always had the understanding that there is a huge amount of practical value in belonging to a church in many parts of the US, in terms of social and financial support.

Isn’t it the case that more women are likely to actually need that support and find it worth their while to invest time in a church to get it, because women are poorer/more likely to be raising families on their own?

I’m sure you could be an active member of a church for its economic and social benefits and still not say you believe in the religion when you’re asked on a private questionnaire, but the cognitive dissonance of that would be too unpleasant for most people to deal with.

I think this is probably adding to Amanda’s point rather than offering an alternative; the economic pressure to belong to a church is part of the social pressure.

Women feel more obligation than men to be affiliated with groups that are about community.

Is it about obligation, or genuine desire? A slightly different explanation would be that American men, for whatever reason, have just come to be more skeptical of formal groups and opt for more informal community participation. The book “Bowling Alone” talked about the general decline in Americans’ participation in social groups, and that there were differences in the changes between men and women. I haven’t read it in a while, but I believe that men showed a slightly larger decline in group participation than women over the last few decades.

Yeah, I think the religion aspect at least brings up questions of gullibility.  But the evidence points to a different answer—-women are more likely to be affiliated with groups in general, and intelligence or gullibility has nothing to do with it.

Again, the most relevant aspect of this is that the gap between men and women is very small.  But one thing that would be interesting is seeing what the gender ratios in organized atheism are like.  It seems very lopsided to men, but I think that’s because atheism is still a club of individualists, as it were, and men have a lot more social permission than women to flout social norms about religion.  Which is to say, I find that there’s almost as many female non-believers as male non-believers, but they may be more likely to be quiet about it.

What about the life expectancy gap?  People seem to get more involved with religion as they get older, likely out of a fear of death, and women live longer than men.  Could the existence of more elderly women be part of the discrepancy or did the study control for that?

ballast, I don’t think so, for the very important reason that both men and women have a strong need not to be lonely.  But it might be a dual thing—-women experience more pressure to do community stuff, and men are more subject to shame for needing it.  My experience tells me that a lot of men are wary of expressing need for support from anyone outside of their romantic partner.  Not all, of course—-plenty of men don’t seem to have a problem with talking openly of the importance of friendship, etc.  But for some reason, our culture has led a lot of men to believe that putting all their emotional needs on a single woman is the most masculine thing to do.  I haven’t seen research on this, but my experience inclines me to think that the more sexist/conservative a man is, the more he relies solely on his wife for emotional support.  It’s the feminist men I know who have genuinely close friendships outside of just their sports-watching buddies, who have conversations with friends—-both male and female—-about emotional topics.  But more conservative men, I think, feel that sort of vulnerability should be reserved strictly for one’s spouse.

I think that’s one reason you see a lot of conservative men go on a complete meltdown after a divorce, and become insanely misogynist right wing nuts, like MRAs or anti-choice activists.  They put all their eggs in one basket, and when she left, they were left completely alone and that will make anyone a little nutty.

Yet another possible explanation: a regional phenomenon. Consider the gender ratio map on this page. We have a more religious region - the South - where women dominate, and a less religious region - the Rockies/West Coast (Utah excepted) - where men show a bit more presence. That correlation doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it seems reasonable to believe that just being in the Bible Belt will leave you more likely to establish affiliation with a religious group.

for the very important reason that both men and women have a strong need not to be lonely ... I haven’t seen research on this, but my experience inclines me to think that the more sexist/conservative a man is, the more he relies solely on his wife for emotional support.

Yeah, I can believe that. But men were much more inclined to be joiners of groups in the past, and I certainly don’t think that it was because they were less sexist/conservative. The increased male dependence on a smaller social circle (perhaps a circle of one) seems to be a more recent phenomenon.

Historically, men have treated religion as a “woman thing” that is optional or deprecated for themselves, but mandatory for the womenfolk: while they may despise it, a proper wife is one who clings to it. Almost exactly like makeup and dresses: there is a particular sort of man who would never ever put them on himself, but would never ever think of marrying a woman who didn’t herself. And those men don’t see any contradiction in their value system. It’s been the same way with Christianity (other religions may follow the same pattern, but I don’t know for sure.) Homer snores in church, insults the preacher, and whines about the sermons while Marge sighs and drags the family in every week. If she stopped, it would threaten the family order.

That’s also related to a nebulous idea of a kind of familial or household salvation; as long as there’s one devout woman-person in a family to take care of the praying and the guilt and the duty, the fathers and sons can relax and blaspheme as they please, knowing it’s taken care of. They get to despise it at the same time as they reap all the social benefits of it.

I think that this paradigm has weakened considerably in the past several decades, but it still persists somewhat, especially among older couples, and you can’t expect to make much of the numbers without being aware of it. Women being more overtly religious has as much to do with male expectation as it does with female desire.

My experience with atheist online communities is that the gender ratio is close enough to 50/50 that any divergence would be the result of pure random chance. And seriously, that’s a major divergence from most online communities I’ve been a part of (anything gamer-related, for instance, is something like 80/20 to 90/10 in favor of men… boys, actually, most of the time ).

It’s possible more men claim atheism but are not involved or interested in getting involved (apatheism).

Also, not to be Captain Obvious or anything, but we live in a society dominated by Christianity above other religions. Despite what goes on in practice, in theory and in rhetoric Christianity is still supposed to be a religion of, by, and for the downtrodden, the poor, the oppressed, and the miserable. Christianity promises that the last will be first and the first will be last. The meek will inherit the earth. Surprisingly, the powerless tend to respond to that sort of thing more enthusiastically than the powerful.

Homer snores in church, insults the preacher, and whines about the sermons while Marge sighs and drags the family in every week. If she stopped, it would threaten the family order.

Yep.  It’s another of a mother’s obligations (to give her children a religious upbringing) that fathers don’t seem to get hit with.

And there is the idea that God/Jesus are non-judgemental and that is important to people in an overly-judgemental world.

men have a lot more social permission than women to flout social norms about religion.

I think that’s basically it. A lot of people who don’t have strong religious beliefs feel the need to identify with a religion so as not to seem like weirdos or crazy rebels, and since women tend to get more pressure to conform than men, they might be less likely to admit nonbelief or apathy.

And then there’s two traditions of atheism (okay, more than two, but two of interest). Okay, three. You can get to be an atheist through pure ungendered higher reasoning, with or without adolescent exposure to Bertrand Russell and so on to help you on your way. The best way, really.

Or you can get to it through feminism by asking why you should worship a god who despises you and created you to be a subordinate helpmate, even if he does exist. From there it’s only a matter of time before you start to wonder if such an asshole does exist at all.

But you can also get to atheism the third way, the douchebag teenage-Nietzchean way, by asking why you, a penis person, should feel morally bound by a religion for slaves and women. Explicitly misogynist atheism has a really strong and ugly history, and it feeds off the perception of religion as feminine. A misogynist semi-Christian could go one of two ways: either start whining about the wimpy womanly Sunday School Jesus, and opt for Muscular Christianity, talking up the Jesus who threw the money changers out of the temple with his big manly dick—or he could become the kind of atheist who talks about how dumb and gullible and servile and credulous women are, with their church-going and their piety and their boobs. I can’t prove that there are enough of these guys floating around to make a significant number of women reactionarily defensive of their faith, but I suspect it does happen.

I can’t prove that there are enough of these guys floating around to make a significant number of women reactionarily defensive of their faith, but I suspect it does happen.

They’re the libertarian morons who hate religion for the same reason they hate paying taxes: it sucks and is no fun. They don’t have to have any kind of logical or rational backing for anything they believe; they’ve stumbled onto a reasonable position by accident, so you can’t rely on them to have any other defensible beliefs backed by actual evidence. They haven’t put any more thought into their atheism than a small child whining about how boring church is.

I don’t know if women specifically are convinced that atheists are all self-centered, childish libertarian assholes, but I’m sure it’s one of the first things that comes to mind when the average religious person thinks of an atheist.

I’ve always thought one strong motivation for women to be religious is because we’re held to a higher moral standard. The Madonna/Whore dichotomy affects all women in this culture. A man can be just a man, but a woman will often be categorized by much more exacting criteria. From her clothes to her sex life to her motherhood to her job, there are people who look for proof to label her as either respectable or a slut. Going to church and believing in God is a good way to earn respectability and also a good way to combat any shame you’ve grown up with. I’ve noticed my 3 friends who’ve turned hardcore religious in our 30’s all have heavy shame about their past - abortions, bad reputations, addiction, etc.

When I spent a winter in a small Southern town, I was amazed by how many people asked what church I went to. No one was rude when I said that I didn’t, but it was clear I lost Nice Girl points (and probably gained Weird Yankee points) with that.

Very nice bit of reflection on women and men’s roles. I’d also like to agree with others, up above, that point out that all things having to do with education and child rearing require more affiliation from people with primary caretaking roles—and they generally need more of the support that organizations can offer. I’d like to see a breakdown that focused on the other committments men and women generally have, socially speaking.

I’d also like to point out that women are generally forced to be responsible for all “social” duties—like visiting elders, maintaining family traditions, and especially respecting and handling domestic religious/ritual/and commensal duties. That’s why women, more than men, are forced to keep wearing “traditional” garb and preparing “traditional” meals long after their husbands and their children have fully assmilated. Religious affiliation is just one of the many kinds of “kin work” that women do, and are forced to do, because their communities think its important that someone pivotal in the family keep up appearances/connections that the men can relinquish or take lightly.

aimai

Sophonisba @ 24: I guess I came to my atheism via Door No. 2. My Reader’s Digest version of my slide into non-believership starts with me getting all excited about the Mormon doctrine that claims this life is a test for godhood, and upon achieving godhood, you get to create your own planets. So I studied sciences and geology and so on with that in mind, crafting my worlds ahead of time, and one day dared to show my maps and sketches to a bishop, who said, “Oh, you won’t do that. That will be your husband. You’ll be too busy raising spirit children.” The number of show-stopping ideas in that statement detoured me on a slow track to questioning my religion and from there it was the fun ascent out of Plato’s Cavern.

I found a point ballast said interesting upthread - is it possible we’re being unintentionally sexist in our analysis of why women participate in communal activities more by treating male as the default?  A sense of community and close social groups are undoubtedly a good thing (says the misanthropist loner) so why are men so puzzlingly deficient in it? A possibility is that men are encouraged to be social, but only in all male environments (or alone with your wife when the shades are drawn) while women are encouraged to socialize with both sexes, so it’s just a numbers game?

/i think i double looped a “what about the men” type troll

They’re the libertarian morons who hate religion for the same reason they hate paying taxes: it sucks and is no fun.

Those aren’t the ones I mean, though, except as they overlap (which I grant they sometimes do.)  And hating religion because it’s no fun is a perfectly good reason to do so. It’s only moronic to assess religion in terms of its usefulness or how much fun it is if you already accept that its fundamental tenets are true, and atheists, by definition, don’t.

I am talking about atheists who are atheists because religion is for women, because Christianity, specifically, supposedly espouses feminine values. “Slave religion,” and all that. It’s a real thing, and it is sexist by design and by ideology, not in the lazy background way of your average libertarian. I am not on board with the “loud atheists are jerks” thing, at all.

The other problem with this philosophy is that it inspires religious men to take the bait and argue with them on their terms,  defending Christianity by explaining how it’s not actually woman-friendly at all, no matter what we let the dumb chicks think. Hence, Manly Jesus, Promise Keepers, etc.

Why are women (slightly more) religious?

Multiple orgasms.  Shouting “Oh God, Oh God!!” more often *must* have an effect.

I am talking about atheists who are atheists because religion is for women, because Christianity, specifically, supposedly espouses feminine values. “Slave religion,” and all that. It’s a real thing, and it is sexist by design and by ideology, not in the lazy background way of your average libertarian. I am not on board with the “loud atheists are jerks” thing, at all.

These people, when religious, follow the Norse religion.  Loudly.

PixelFish: I don’t even have a Mormon background but I’m angry about that anyway.  I’d come to God in a second if I got my own planet out of it and I know I’m not alone, they have no idea how many female converts they’re passing up.

Well I can tell you one reason; church child care. 2 quiet hours on a Sunday is nothing to sneeze at, especially when they’re so little they get up at the crack of dawn anyway.  Throw in a snack and an art project, and they’re ready for a nap when you get home. Also; church schools and preschools thrive in rural areas that don’t have secular daycares available for working moms, and if you take your kids to the school, you’ll probably feel obligated to attend the church.

And hating religion because it’s no fun is a perfectly good reason to do so. It’s only moronic to assess religion in terms of its usefulness or how much fun it is if you already accept that its fundamental tenets are true, and atheists, by definition, don’t.

Yeah, it’s really one of those nice side benefits that comes from realizing there’s no god to care if you don’t go to church. If I honestly thought I had to choose between going to hell and praying, I’d suck it the fuck up and pray.

I am not on board with the “loud atheists are jerks” thing, at all.

Me neither, since I’m one of them, but I cringe at having anything in common with libertarians and the misogynists you describe.

As I said in comments at Almost Diamonds, I am not surprised by this (in the form of Stephanie’s interpretation that is).  At many levels, in many contexts, across cultures, and across history there tends to have been a tendency for women to be more affiliative in their behavior and men to be more coalitional.  This makes sense from social, ethnographic, cultural, and biological perspectives enough that in a relatively egalitarian and non-gendered society we would expect to see a few percent difference anyway. 

It is very typical for a male-female difference to be initially couched in female-negative terms (as you point out right at the start of your post) and later we discover that those terms are bogus and often that there is an opposite effect going on.  As a hypothesis, I offer the following:  We already know that holding religious or spiritual beliefs is often done in conflict with other things in people’s lives.  Thus, to retain your natal beliefs in an increasingly (we hope) scientific world, one has to do two things with one’s brain at once.  I’ll let you fill in the blanks.

The increased male dependence on a smaller social circle (perhaps a circle of one) seems to be a more recent phenomenon.

The definitions of masculinity adapt to circumstances.  I’ve read writers who’ve convincingly argued that the increasingly restrictive controls on the male right to form relationships outside of their marital/conjugal one that are emotionally supportive has everything to do with the growing public awareness of homosexuality.  Men feel the need to prove they aren’t gay.  In the Victorian era, sleeping with a male friend—-by which I mean sharing a bed, not having sex—-was acceptable.  Now some men push back while shaking hands.  Hugging women is something men do with ease.  But they shake hands with other men.  Interestingly, this seems to be true across sexual orientation.  Women hug each other, and this is true across sexual orientation, too.  And yet, it’s still homophobic in origin, I believe.

My experience is that most active atheists are liberal, so soph’s #3 reason is a minor concern.  But what few are drawn in by that probably don’t stick around long, because the demands of the atheist community are the same of any community, which require decency, etc.  Respect for women isn’t a minimum standard to be Christian, at least in many fundie communities, but since there’s no real rational argument against it for atheists, I don’t see that inculcated at all.  It’s more like it exists in the secular/mainline Christian world at large.  Muttered in the margins.

“These people, when religious, follow the Norse religion.  Loudly.”

as in “My God carries a hammer, yours was nailed to a cross.”?

I wonder what conservative religious folks would make of these statistics. You know, the ones who believe atheism is not just incorrect but actively foolish, but also that women are innately inferior to men, especially in the area of spiritual insights (God only chooses male prophets, etc.).

There’s always the idea that there is no difference.  I doubt that a 7% difference is anywhere close to a significant difference and may just be due to the sample that they took.  Maybe by chance they gave a few more religious women surveys then men.  Surveys don’t tell us much - especially without any stats to back it up. 

Also, I think someone farther up the thread post said that religion is mostly associated with women?  Since when?  God, our FATHER our LORD - males dominating the clergy - males dominating the religious texts - I could go on, but I think you get the point.  Most religion (especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition) are HEAVILY male dominated.

I’d venture to say that 7% difference doesn’t tell us anything besides that ONE random sample showed women were slightly more religious.  If you did the same survey again, you very well could get the exact opposite results.

So I had something to say about this, but I clicked through to the link first and completely forgot to care about my point when I saw this:

Nones are much more likely to believe in human evolution (61%) than the general American public (38%).

What the fucking fuck fuck! Okay, so Nones are smarter than your average bear, but what do the 39 percent of Nones who DON’T believe in evolution believe about the origin of life? Space aliens? Fairies? What? Holy shit!

There are a lot of reasons. 

One is that the less power over her/his life a person has, the more superstitious the person is apt to be.  Then the person can invoke magical rituals -everything from throwing salt over one’s shoulder, to praying for rain- in order to attempt to control, or at least feel that one can control, the oppressive world.

It is no secret that women have less power, social, economic, physical-autonomic and so on.  It used to be we pretty much legally belonged to our Husband or Father.

All sorts of responses develop from this situation, passive-aggression, “Uncle Tom-ism”, fervent belief in a power HIGHER than the one oppressing you, and of course “buying in” to the claim of Man that He is Vastly Superior and You are Dirt. Dirty dirt.  All women are Filthy, depraved, stupid.  So a religion that promises purity and redemption would be a raft one would cling to, especially when, as with Catholics, the PURE MOTHER is invoked, not to mention the female saints.

Re: social pressure, I can’t find a link, but I have a strong memory of a biography of Anthony Trollope that reported Trollope’s distaste for American women, whom he found “loud, masculine, and atheistic.”  Rock on, I say.

The single-digit gap is still disturbing though.  Every religion I’ve ever heard of preaches male supremacy, in practice if not dogma.  Shouldn’t women be LESS willing than men to put up with an ideology that calls them inferior and born to subservience—not just equally willing?

The poll also says that women are more likely to remain nonreligious if they were raised nonreligious and more likely to remain religious if they were raised religious; given that there are more religious than non, the greater tendency of men to drift from their upbringing might explain the difference.  If the number of religious and nonreligious were reversed, there would be more men among the religious than women.

“What I think she’s found is the more mundane explanation—-women feel more obligation than men to be affiliated with groups that are about community.”

I recall a BBC programme a couple of years ago about the history of the Church of England (or mainstream Christianity - can’t remember) in C20 Britain, that noted that the massive decline in church attendance correlated with the release of social pressures on women. That is, once women stopped having to attend church on Sundays to show that they were good women and uphold the family’s social position, they simply stopped going.

Unree beat me to it. I was going to pose the same sub-question: Given that most religions (i.e. at least the ones I’m familiar with) treat women worse than they treat men, why would women choose churches as the vehicle for their social bonding / community building? Why not join a different type of organization? Even if church X is the only game in town, why not get together with a few like-minded women and start up an alternative network?

I was raised Catholic and remain in contact with many of them, and I constantly see women doing the toughest jobs within an organization that clearly tells them they’re second-class citizens. Many of these women know this and are clearly disdainful of RCC hierarchy, but they still practice cognitive dissonance by staying in the RCC. Secede, ladies, secede! Run your own show! Walk away and build your own church/group/community/whatever. Build it without the drawbacks. You have the technology. You can make it better, stronger, faster…

My bet would go on the community aspect of religion and the support systems that are inherent in them. Women seem more likely to desire to use and maintain those social networks. Mothers, in particular, can use church services like pre-schools and after-school activities, which become more important as cash-strapped school districts cut funding for extracurricular activities.

If this explanation is correct then it has nothing to do with women being more gullible. It’s a rational way of dealing with the often unfair demands of our modern, patriarchal world.

Interesting post, great analysis.

Veronica @26: when we lived for three years and a week in exile in a small town in VA, pretty much every single new person we met asked us almost immediately where we went to church. Usually, it was phrased like this: “Where do you worship?” I would just say, “Oh, we don’t.” But I am a big, mean-looking guy, so the person would then turn to Ms. F, who is medium-sized and sweet, and who totally wears the pants in our house, and start talking to her about the wonderful church opportunities available in small-town hell. Then Ms. F would proceed to tell this person about her opinion of patriarchal mythology. Always good for a laugh later on, tho we never did have a lot of friends there.

And Amanda, maybe it’s just because my circle is intown hipsters who are pushing forty and don’t really give a crap about anyone’s opinion of their perceived sexuality, but straight dudes hug each other all the time here. Usually it’s the manly half-hug, but there’s no real fear of physical contact.

I think it’s important to remember that “religion” isn’t just one thing, that it’s not just the most conservative, traditional, patriarchal version of whatever is out there, and that most religious people don’t actually spend a lot of time thinking about the dogma of their own religion. The more liberal branches of Christianity and Judaism have opened up every conceivable role for women, to the point that conservatives within those branches bemoan the feminization of religion and worry that men will just stop participating altogether.

The other thing I’m not clear on is whether “affiliation” means self-identification or membership and attendance at a religious institution. I know, and I’m sure many of you do as well, many people who, if asked, would say they are Catholic, but who hardly ever go to Church, think the Church hierarchy is a load of crap, and whose notion of God is pretty abstract. But culturally, they identify as Catholic. I identify as strongly as Jewish, though I don’t believe in God. I am not remotely unusual in that regard. If I was asked about my religious “affiliation,” I probably would say Jewish.  The survey notes that people who started out Catholic or Jewish make up a large percentage of the secular. I’m not sure that women actually do this - continue to identify culturally without really believing - more than men, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we did. And it’s not all conformity or coercion. Some of us are in it for the food.

I want to clarify something I wrote. I wouldn’t hesitate to answer “atheist” or “none” because of some sense that that’s bad or socially unacceptable. I would worry that giving an answer like that would erase part of who I am that I’m not interested in erasing. Again, I don’t really know that that sense is more common in women than men, but in my little sample size of two, I feel that way, and my brother doesn’t in the slightest. He would say none or atheist.

Hmmm, where do I begin with this one?

First, I’d like to challenge the assertion that political affiliation is based in rationalist arguments (since that is played off religious sentiment). There’s a huge emotional component to political affiliation—the whole Daddy party/Mommy party thing, for one.

Second, I’m not going to let the ‘women are the glue, men are the lazy asses by the grill’ comment slide. In my experience, volunteer roles are often gendered. Women dominate PTA bake sales, but men dominate volunteer fire and ambulance corps. For the past eight years, my church has held a fundraiser to help families in the community struggling financially due to medical problems (28 families—$280K) and women make and serve the cabbage and noodles/men do the grill, women do the children’s games/men set up the outdoor stage and tents, women run the auctions/men are the best raffle ticket salespeople (but then 1st prize is a Harley).

Third, I tend to look with skepticism on the whole religious affiliation stats. Most claimed belief is like the Platte River in the summer—a mile wide at the mouth but only six inches deep. A decade ago, an in-depth study was made of actual religious service attendance was conducted in Ashtabula county, Ohio and showed that only 20% of the population was in church/temple on average. But then I subscribe to the Pareto principle, so that doesn’t bother me much.

Fourth, when I survey the active women of my church, gullible would be the last adjective I would ever attach to them. I can picture several who are quite hard-nosed and blunt-spoken. And while the community aspect is certainly part of the greater attraction of faith communities for women, I think it goes somewhat deeper than that. It has to do with religious language itself, with which men tend to be less comfortable than women. Most mainline Protestant preachers are liberals, so conservative-leaning men would not hear their values and assumptions upheld. They’d hear them challenged. Moreover, even in most evangelical churches, where the clergy tends to be conservative, the language from the pulpit is often based on the therapeutic model of self-help, which men shy away from. But more than that, women are more adept linguistically and can handle more amorphous, ambiguous concepts than men. For a lot of men, if you can’t touch, smell, taste, hear or see it, it isn’t real. If anything, that makes men more gullible! Think of how many men buy the wingnut party line!

[41] Fembot:  This study was done on an enormous sample, and the standard error for that question (for which there is a 7% difference) is less than a half a percent.  If you trace back to the original reference via the links, you can get a PDF of the study which describes the methodology. 

[42]: “but what do the 39 percent of Nones who DON’T believe in evolution believe about the origin of life? ”  .... that had me wondering as well!

[45]: I think your comment is exactly right.  The difference here could be entirely in (the gender difference in) the nature of the transition that is occurring socially.

The definitions of masculinity adapt to circumstances.  I’ve read writers who’ve convincingly argued that the increasingly restrictive controls on the male right to form relationships outside of their marital/conjugal one that are emotionally supportive has everything to do with the growing public awareness of homosexuality.  Men feel the need to prove they aren’t gay.  In the Victorian era, sleeping with a male friend—-by which I mean sharing a bed, not having sex—-was acceptable.  Now some men push back while shaking hands.  Hugging women is something men do with ease.  But they shake hands with other men.  Interestingly, this seems to be true across sexual orientation.  Women hug each other, and this is true across sexual orientation, too.  And yet, it’s still homophobic in origin, I believe.

This is an interesting idea, but we’re really discouraged from similar relationships with women (or are you saying we’ve always been, as everyone’s always been aware of heterosexuality in men?)  I don’t think hugging women is something men do with ease (well, excluding women we’re in conjugal relationships with or descended from), but that being hugged by a woman is not something we can opt out of socially without coming across as an enormous asshole.

Okay, so Nones are smarter than your average bear, but what do the 39 percent of Nones who DON’T believe in evolution believe about the origin of life?

I’ve heard many of the worst fundamentalists say with no irony whatsoever that they have no religion, they have a relationship with the Lord. A religion is one of those false things of the world, and all.

I don’t think they make up 39% of the Nones, but I’m almost certain that 100% of the ones who are deluded enough to call themselves Nones instead of Christians don’t believe in evolution.

As for the rest… well, you can be an idiot and an atheist, plus I don’t know how they phrased the question, it might explain away some of these numbers.

The poll also says that women are more likely to remain nonreligious if they were raised nonreligious and more likely to remain religious if they were raised religious; given that there are more religious than non, the greater tendency of men to drift from their upbringing might explain the difference. 

I think social conditioning can certainly play a big part. I was raised in a big Irish Catholic family - 3 aunts are nuns, one uncle is a priest, we went to Mass every week without fail. I am the only person in my family who no longer goes to church*. My sisters have duly baptized their children and promised to raise them in the Catholic faith, but I know that they don’t believe in the Catholic faith, they just feel that they must do this lest they upset our parents.

*Actually, I do go to church, as a paid singer - I am a section leader in the choir and I cantor. Paying me money is the only way to get me to walk inside a church these days. But I don’t observe the religion and I get the summer off.

How does this map with respect to male/female participation in the labor force? Formal jobs obviously take time that could be used for community affiliations, but they also tend to provide a certain kind of community that may not be counted here.

From #51

maybe it’s just because my circle is intown hipsters who are pushing forty and don’t really give a crap about anyone’s opinion of their perceived sexuality, but straight dudes hug each other all the time here. Usually it’s the manly half-hug, but there’s no real fear of physical contact.

My experience as well, FWIW.

Look at age spread average between men and women.

maybe it’s just because my circle is intown hipsters who are pushing forty and don’t really give a crap about anyone’s opinion of their perceived sexuality, but straight dudes hug each other all the time here.

Yes, it’s because of your circle. In my usual circle (largely younger, urban geeky West Coast folk), the guys hug. In other regions of the country, and with other demographics (e.g. my family back east), the guys just shake hands. Although sometimes I instinctively go for the handshake, perhaps out of either older habit or some desire to not impose a hug on someone it might make uncomfortable.

interesting observation. My wife and I joined a church four years ago, primarily at her urging (I have always believed in God, but I was and still am wary of organized religion) more for the sense of community than the religion. One of the ways our church brings in families with young children is the prospect of a couple hours’ free child-care. (“Drop your kids off at Sunday school for an hour and go to the neighborhood coffee shop, then come back for church service!”) Our church is quite liberal (UCC, very gay-friendly), or I wouldn’t have joined. Even with that liberal-ness, there are still a lot more female volunteers than male ones, and a large number of the male volunteers in our church are gay.

Sorry, but as an atheist I find these numbers profoundly depressing, gender gap or no.

what do the 39 percent of Nones who DON’T believe in evolution believe about the origin of life? Space aliens? Fairies? What?

Mud. They believe God created man out of mud. They share this belief with a surprising number of the world’s other organized religions, BTW.

Oops. I think I misinterpreted an earlier post. She or he meant 39% of non-religious people don’t believe in evolution. You’re right, that is a puzzler.

“Respect for women isn’t a minimum standard to be Christian, at least in many fundie communities, but since there’s no real rational argument against it for atheists, I don’t see that inculcated at all. “

I agree, to a point.  Overt, egregious misogyny/sexism doesn’t seem to be tolerated, but apathetic, dismissive sexism or straight up male privilege frequently is.  In my experience, atheists tend to be more open to discussing the issue, but there I have run into an occasional strong dependence on male (or white, or straight or able-bodied, etc) privilege and an unwillingness to accept that they might not know all the answers.

@ Greg Laden:  Maybe I’m being dense, but what’s the difference between “affiliative” and “coalitional”?

There have been recent studies that have compared religiosity between modern “Western” societies and have found strong correlations between social inequality (with attendant insecurity for the individual, financial and otherwise) and degree of religious affiliation. The correlation is that the more unequal and insecure a society is, the greater the likelihood of religious affiliation. In more egalitarian societies with a strong governmental social safety net, rates of religion are lower. This was used as a partial explanation of why Americans are so much more religious than Western Europeans. As other commentators have noted, women’s inequality is probably a factor in the different rates of religiosity.

The question that came up with the national comparisons is which is the causative factor, religion or equality - do more religious societies that believe individuals will be rewarded in the afterlife (or that status in this life is the result of God’s favour) feel less of a need to improve standards for all, and are therefore more unequal, or in more egalitarian societies do people feel less of a need to seek succour and support in religion?

To apply this to the American gender gap in religion, is it the inequality that causes women to be more religious, or is it that religion plays a role in making women more unequal? That is, the effects of sexist religious doctrine encouraging female submission, the acceptance of suffering as ennobling martyrdom, the attitude that forgiveness and passivity are more religious than fighting for rights, and so on. I would think that it’s probably a combination of both rather than one causing the other. But of course as Amanda points out the difference between the sexes in this study is not that significant.

My take is that belief in the supernatural tends to attract people who feel relatively powerless in this world.  They pray (or chant, or cast spells, or whatever) because they hope/think it’ll give them an edge that isn’t available to them in the real world. So you see more women and more poor people, and you see missionaries doing their thing most successfully among the truly SOL.

what do the 39 percent of Nones who DON’T believe in evolution believe about the origin of life? Space aliens? Fairies? What?

Well, keep in mind the first question:  The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) 2008 is a random digit dialed (RDD) survey of a nationally representative sample of 54,461 adults. Of those, 7,407 are Nones, or individuals who responded to the question: What is your religion, if any? with “none,” “atheist,” “agnostic,” “secular,” or “humanist.”

So lumping “agnostic”, “secular”, “humanist”, and “none (of the above)” in could leave a lot of holes.  How many of these people were members of unlisted or unpracticed religions?  How many folks believe in Jesus but don’t consider themselves a member of a “Christian” denomination?  How many humanists have some form of spiritual faith, but don’t follow a specific deity or church?

I mean, how many Wiccans did they count?  How many folks worshiping the Greek pantheon?  How many pseudo-religious anti-establishment college students?

And the second question was:  Figure 1.15
Do you think that human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals?

First off, 9% declared “I don’t know”.  That may be coming from admitted ignorance, but I consider that an admission of ignorance is a step up from an embracing of superstition.

Of the None group, 17% believed “Definitely Not”.  That’s half as many as the religious group.  Also worth noting the question above it on Horoscopes - 17% of nones believe they maybe or definitely could predict the future.  So, being a None doesn’t preclude you from being a moron.  And it doesn’t preclude you from being superstitious,

I think the most troubling group is the 13% of “Probably Nots” because they seem to have enough education not to write off evolution entirely, but have been giving enough rhetoric to sway them onto the wrong side of the fence.  It seems these Nones are victims of misinformation.  Someone must have told them something to dissuade them.

Revrick 54:  I suppose being active, or running a lot of religious services & such may have been many women’s road to any kind of social power. And still is in some communities.

I agree with sophonisba at comments #17 and 19: religion has long been (in this country) framed as a “woman’s thing” (consider in pop culture—not only the Simpsons, but also—pace GHW Bush—the Waltons).  I’m actually surprised the discrepancy is so low.  Indeed, you hear a lot of gnashing of teeth in, e.g., the Jewish community about how liberal Judaism with its allowing women to participate in the same ways as men, is driving the menz away (with studies to show this is the case): but in reality I suspect that what is changing is that Jews are assimilating into American norms about the religious sphere being a woman’s sphere.  Are the numbers different between Christians and other religions?

I hope I am not too bigoted in feeling this way, but it seems to me that part of the “attraction” that Christianity might have to women over men is that God (or at least part of God) is, in Christianity, so explicitly male?  C.f. the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs, there is an element of sexuality in our imagining of our relationship with God.  Isn’t it perhaps then easier for a straight woman to have a “personal” relationship with an explicitly male god-figure than it is for a man?

DAS, I don’t think Christians want to fuck their god. He’s the Father and the Son, not the Boyfriend. Men are allowed to love their fathers and sons as deeply and vulnerably as they like.

Junk science, you haven’t listened to much contemporary Christian music. Jesus is the perfect boyfriend. Admittedly, God-the-Lover is a less emphasized version, but very very popular among a certain type of young Christian woman.

And it’s MUCH easier to have a romance with God than with any ordinary boy. I mean, he’s always there. He always listens. He always loves you. He knows what you look like naked, but never laughs and never takes liberties. He never has zits or bad hair days or bad stinky moods when he just wants you to go away so he can blast some heavy metal.

As others have brought up, the statistical difference may have more to do with perceptions of what is an “acceptable answer” or just what that particular sampling turned up.  Not sure if one can conclude that women are more likely to be religious than men….or that more women feel they must project the image that they are to maintain acceptance in their community/society at large…especially considering 7 percent is not much of a difference considering most people in both genders do identify as religious. 

And it’s MUCH easier to have a romance with God than with any ordinary boy. I mean, he’s always there. He always listens. He always loves you. He knows what you look like naked, but never laughs and never takes liberties. He never has zits or bad hair days or bad stinky moods when he just wants you to go away so he can blast some heavy metal.

I find the gendering of heavy metal as macho and masculine amusing considering how heavy metal was associated in the minds of myself and my childhood friends in the old NYC neighborhood with rich suburban/Upper-East Sider White kids wanting to seem tough and over-the-top cheesyness with the emphasis on big hair and ostentatious spandex outfits over the music to the point they became self-parodies.  As a result, blasting such music when one is in a bad mood back in the day was a good way for a dude to commit social suicide by becoming an object of ridicule…..along with accusations of trying to emulate rich White suburban/upper-east sider kids.

Actually, I was thinking loud and obnoxious and used for shutting out the whole world.

And since I was raised in WhiteyMcWhitesville Rural Bedroom Community, Heavy Metal was the rebellion music of choice. We still had churches that held record burnings. Girls listened to Lita Ford and the boys listened to Guns & Roses or Dio or (for the really rebellious) Black Sabbath.

Snobs listened to classical.

Actually, I was thinking loud and obnoxious and used for shutting out the whole world.

And since I was raised in WhiteyMcWhitesville Rural Bedroom Community, Heavy Metal was the rebellion music of choice. We still had churches that held record burnings. Girls listened to Lita Ford and the boys listened to Guns & Roses or Dio or (for the really rebellious) Black Sabbath.

The main rebellious music choices I remember from my childhood neighborhood off the top of my head was Rap a la Run DMC, LL Cool J, Fat Boys, Beastie Boys, pop acts like Madonna (large Catholic population), or various R & B dance music that I constantly heard from blaring radios being carried by neighbors and passing cars.  Metal wasn’t popular in my area as a kid and the only fans I knew growing up were older cousins who lived in mostly White upper/upper-middle class suburbs until high school where there were some metal fans from the upper-east side. 

Closest thing which was accepted were a few older kids who were into Bruce Springsteen…..though the fact most of them were racists turned me off his music until I was older and realized what “Born in the USA” was really about. 

Girls listened to Madonna, boys listened to rap with some mixing.  Both listened to R & B dance music and pop like Michael Jackson or Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam.