It may have something to do with hormone exposure in the womb, as the study found that foetuses exposed to different levels of hormones correlated with beliefs in the supernatural. These hormone levels are related to sex, so males exposed to levels typical of females had more, and females exposed to levels typical of males had less, strong beliefs about the supernatural.

I mean, even if women are/were more likely to be religious/superstitious, I still don’t think that would change the way I feel about anything when I consider the fact that there are just as many *men* waiting there in positions of priesthood and religious authority to take advantage of that kind of belief — whether it’s coming from a man or a woman.

The whole discussion has been so absurd – most people have been saying that, yes, there are differences between the sexes, and to ignore them in the name of being PC is stupid/ patronizing/ whatever. Okay, fine. The same point was made 50 times – with NO discussion of whether *this* particular supposed difference exists.

We were asked to consider a response to the article that was one big appeal to ignoring a hypothesis on the grounds that someone doesn’t like the consequences. Some in the comments also took this approach. I don’t think you understand why or how much this upsets people. Perhaps there is no discussion because no one had objections to the statistics.

There could be any number of explanations for the statistical difference. For example, we know that some in the “Nones” group have religious belief but do not like organized religion.

If your explanation for the difference was true then you would expect more males that are religious but unaffiliated with religion. In the pew forum survey referred to in the article the reverse is true, females are less likely to call themselves atheist, agnostic, secular unaffiliated, but more likely to call themselves religious unaffiliated.

How can we start making claims about women’s supposed lack of rationality due to their (unproven) (slightly) greater religiosity when most women AND most men are religious in the U.S.? (And when most people of both sexes are NOT religious in European countries?)

The article does not make such claims, and the articles it links to also do not. They’re really not at all as controversial as people are suggesting. Most of the criticism against the article are straight forward lies.

“I’m 30 years old. I grew up in a generation where women did not have obstacles to pursuing a scientific education. But when I went off into University to study Math, Physics, and Engineering, there were fewer than 10% females in any of my classes. However, my observation is that there were a much higher percentage of women in chemistry and biology:

“So to me it has always been interesting that given absolute freedom to choose their education, that very few women seem to be picking science. And if they do pick science, they pick chemistry and biology far more often than physics or math (if you consider math a science).”-Voodoo Chile

First I have to ask–how do you know there were no obstacles to women in science when you grew up? What do you base that off? Because I can assure you that such obstacles still exist today. Ask any female physics graduate student, and she will tell you that women are not welcomed when they are hired. I know of one woman who told me that her department was recently informed by the NSF that if they didn’t hire more women, they’d lose their grants. So they hired a woman. And no one respected her, or would talk or collaborate with her, because they believed she wasn’t hired on “merit,” she was hired because another vagina was needed to walk their halls so they could keep their money. She was completely shut out from her colleagues. I would say that’s a definite obstacle.

Secondly, as outlined in this very interesting, though highly speculative article [http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science], science isn’t a great career. In fact, adjusted for IQ and education requirements, science jobs are some of the lowest paid in the nation. Which begs the question, who’d be dumb enough to take such a career? I’ll let you read the article, but it makes some pretty interesting points about why women don’t pick physics or math as often.

Lastly, I was both a physics and molecular biology major, and I can tell you why most of the women in my physics classes dropped out. 1) We did our research and knew that jobs in physics were scarce and paid crap. Almost all of my girlfriends who did physics and graduated and went to grad school got done and were completely unable to find jobs–most of them learned chemistry so they could find work, (for example, in wineries). 2) Faculty positions were scarce, and also paid crap. 3) You spend much of your career locked in an office writing code or typing up papers, which is boring. 4) Physicists are generally unfriendly. The only friendly ones I met in all my six years were women. 5) There’s a lot of sexism. I’ve had several friends complain to me about their professors belittling them, then later using their ideas and claiming them as their own. I’ve also had many if not most of my female colleagues in physics tell stories of sexual harassment and blatant staring. One girlfriend of mine walked into her professor’s office to ask a question, and all he did was stare at her, blatantly up and down, for a solid 30 seconds before responding. I would consider such things obstacles, to say the least.

As for biology, it pays better. I could become a nurse anesthesiologist and make 200k a year easy, or I could work as physics researcher and make 50k, struggling to make tenure. Also, the fields of biology and chemistry are exploding. There’s tons of opportunities and money and research available for the taking. With physics, the best you can hope for is to work for the government (NASA or the Department of Energy) or a few small private companies.

The so-called “hard” sciences like math and physics aren’t difficult to break into because women don’t have the brains (while women made up about 7% of my class, they were often top-scorers on tests) but because the odds are stacked against us. I ultimately picked a career in molecular biology not because I was any better at biology than I was at math or physics (I rocked them all, I can honestly say), but because the career opportunities were numerous and more reasonable and inviting. It’s not about brains, my friends, it’s about choices.

As a woman, as a scientist, and an atheist I’m exceedingly disappointed to see, once again, a bunch of guys sitting around saying, “Well SURE there’re biological differences…guess that means women are more emotional!” It sounds no different than the arguments I’ve heard from Christians on why woman should be silent in church and cover their head, and why they’re not allowed to be priests. Seriously? Allow me to offer you the following:

-A business man is aggressive, a businesswoman is pushy.
-He’s careful about the details, she’s picky.
-He follows through, she doesn’t know when to quit.
-He’s firm, she’s stubborn.
-He makes judgments, she reveals her prejudices.
-He’s a man of the world, she’s “been around.”
-He exercises authority, she’s bossy.
-He’s discreet, she’s secretive.
-He says what he thinks, she’s opinionated.

So who’s more emotional here? Or is it just how we use language to describe men vs. women in the same situation–she’s hysterical, he’s angry. I’ve seen a lot of MACHO, tough, gun-toting, I’m a big-tough-American-man men who were down-right hysterical. But no one every says men are hysterical. WOMEN get hysterical. It’s ’cause of the uterus, ya know?

I’m not saying we should totally disregard differences between the sexes. For example, I have a uterus, and I invest far more (physically, chronologically) in pregnancy than men. Which means I get a bigger say in how, when and if said pregnancy happens. But said biological differences do not NECESSARILY extend to the brain. In fact, almost every study that I’ve read about the biological differences between the brains of men and the brains of women say it’s either negligible or can be completely attributed to culture. For example, in one study (and I’ll have to go find it because I bookmarked it somewhere) scientists looked at cultures where reading was considered a masculine subject and math was considered a feminine one. Surprise, surprise, men in said culture far outperformed women in reading, and women far outperformed men in math.

Frankly, I’m tired of having to explain this to every educated male I come across who thinks he’s so well informed about women. Seriously, one article does not equal doing your homework on the subject. In fact, in 2009, I can’t believe I even have to make the point that women are a different sex than men, not a different SPECIES, and differences, if ANY, are NEGLIGIBLE, or can easily be attributed to other sources of influence. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to crying over my contour integrals and my non-Euclidean geometry and try to find my wandering uterus.

*Sigh. Atheists pride ourselves on being skeptical. But as this discussion shows, we are also prone to accepting uncritically things that fit with our pre-existing beliefs. Disappointing.

The whole discussion has been so absurd – most people have been saying that, yes, there are differences between the sexes, and to ignore them in the name of being PC is stupid/ patronizing/ whatever. Okay, fine. The same point was made 50 times – with NO discussion of whether *this* particular supposed difference exists. I read the article and was completely unimpressed with the way the write seemed to conclude that, just because slightly more men in the U.S. identify themselves as being unaffiliated with any religion, this must mean that women are more religious. Ummm… why? There could be any number of explanations for the statistical difference. For example, we know that some in the “Nones” group have religious belief but do not like organized religion. As other commenters have pointed out, women are still a socially devalued group, and religion is often a tool for gaining social advantage on the part of devalued groups. They may be more willing to identify with an established group due to their lower social position.

Also, the article ONLY mentions the U.S. – except to say that women in Europe are not religious, as a side note. Is the U.S. the only place in the world that matters? Ugh. The article also treated the situation far out of proportion to what the numbers suggest. Even if we ONLY look at the U.S., the strong majority of men are religious! How can we start making claims about women’s supposed lack of rationality due to their (unproven) (slightly) greater religiosity when most women AND most men are religious in the U.S.? (And when most people of both sexes are NOT religious in European countries?)

The bottom line is, people of all stripes, including atheists, are far too eager to latch on to ideas we find appealing, such as that women are less rational than men. I completely agree that women and men are biologically different in evolutionarily predictable ways. But that does not mean that every difference someone suggests fits with reality. This one certainly does not seem to hold water.

And finally, I’m sorry but, as a strongly atheist woman, I TOTALLY resent the idea that women are more “emotional” somehow (a concept that never seems to be defined) and that this keeps us from thinking logically. If you think that, go join the fundies. Seriously.

That said, let’s take the reasoning that the article starts with and apply it to some other groups. African Americans are more religious than whites; does this mean that African Americans are less rational than whites? Personally, I don’t think so; from what I’ve heard, the pressures against coming out atheist are much stronger in African American communities than in white communities. Given that women are likely to be labeled ‘bitches’ for displaying unsocial behavior that men would get a free pass on, maybe social pressures are part of what keep women from leaving the religious communities that they grew up in.

As someone above said, men are vastly more likely than women to believe in UFOs, bigfoot, and conspiracy theories. Does this mean that men are vastly less rational than women? Or is it somehow more rational to believe that the president of the United States orchestrated the deaths of 3K citizens than it is to believe in human parthenogenesis (of a male offspring, no less)? Is it more rational to believe that the vast majority of climate scientists are in some sort of conspiracy with the environmentalists to fabricate global warming evidence than it is to believe that the Catholic church is, on balance, a force for good?

Maybe there are some biological differences that make women resort to religion more than men, and men resort to conspiracy theories more than women, but there are a hell of a lot of confounding factors that haven’t been controlled for here.

Guys, please avoid jumping to the conclusion that you’re intrinsically better (‘more rational’) than half of the human population because of your gender – at least until we get some better evidence.

Lastly, let’s look at the consequences of this argument: where does the conclusion that women are naturally more religious than men (and naturally ‘less rational’ than men) leave the women here who are atheists? As aberrations of their own gender? Are female atheists supposed to accept second chair to male atheists because, even though they’re both atheists, the male ones are inherently ‘more rational’ than the female ones? Or are female atheists somehow the ‘extra rational’ outliers who have struggled to atheism against longer odds than the male atheists have?

It’s disturbing that she mentions the colour and sex of people as if it invalidates what they say. That’s certainly not feminism. I’d be interested to know whether people really say to her that she shouldn’t have irrational beliefs because men don’t. I’d be surprised if people actually say to her that she “must be oppressed” because there’s no “liberal religion”.

All she can say is that they’re “terribly reductionist”, and reminds her of pseudo-science about women because of the consequences it might have. The consequences or whether it reminds you of pseudo-science doesn’t matter, it only matters whether it can be tested, and that there’s evidence to support it. It would be nice for an actual argument why any specific claim made is a too greedy kind of reductionism. Multiple articles including many claims were made, to dismiss them all with two words seems incredible flippant.

The “emerging” part must be in reference to the shit emerging every time they have something to say.