{"id":432,"date":"2009-03-17T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-17T08:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/03\/why-women-are-more-religious-part-3-social-factors-or-what-would-jessica-do.html"},"modified":"2014-11-13T18:38:38","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T17:38:38","slug":"why-women-are-more-religious-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/03\/why-women-are-more-religious-part-3.html","title":{"rendered":"Why women are more religious. Part 3: Social factors (or: What would Jessica do?)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Here\u2019s an evolutionary \u2018Just so\u2019 story from Elisabeth Cornwell, an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado, published just last month<\/a> on a, ahem, popular women\u2019s website:<\/p>\n

Why do women today continue to fall victim to an archaic system of beliefs that foster misogynistic behavior? Why are women even more likely to be religious than men? The simple answer is that it is safe. Please don\u2019t take this as a slight against women \u2013 it isn\u2019t. Male\/female differences exist, but I\u2019m certainly not suggesting that risk taking is a better option than playing it safe. After all, women are less likely than men to die doing incredibly stupid things (check out the Darwin Awards<\/a> it is nearly exclusively male \u2018winners\u2019<\/strong>). But the fact that women are less likely to push the status quo for fear of social exclusion and even retribution makes a lot of evolutionary sense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, as discussed in the previous post<\/a>, it seems like there is actually no link between attitudes to risk and religiosity. In fact it seems like Cornwell is falling prey to the temptation of \u2018minimisation of mystery\u2019 \u2013 here are two mysterious things (risk aversion and religiousness), let\u2019s explain one by the other!<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m not going to beat on Cornwell\u2019s article (Sandwalk<\/a> has already done that). I\u2019m going to take a look at what I think is Cornwell\u2019s deeper idea \u2013 that women are attracted to religion because it provides a secure support network. And the best data for that come from a 2006 paper by Donald Sullins, a sociologist of religion (and ordained priest) at the Catholic University of America.<\/p>\n

His paper takes a really close look at two sources of survey data that are used a lot in social studies of religion: the General Social Survey in the USA, and the World Values Survey. Sullins wrings the data till it squeaks \u2013 there are so many different cuts and analyses that it\u2019s difficult to pull out broad theme. But what the hell, I\u2019m going to try!<\/p>\n

Sullins basically takes two difference tacks. Firstly, he questions whether men and women really differ in religiosity, and if so how. Then he takes a look at whether social factors or personality differences can explain the gap.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>He breaks down religion into two components \u2018affective\u2019 (i.e. the importance of religion, frequency of prayer, etc) and active (i.e. going to church, volunteering). You might think that the social side would be more important to women, and so that might be where the biggest gender gap lies. However, when Sullins looked at the data he found that the opposite was true \u2013 the gap between men and women on religiousness is bigger than the gap in church attendance.<\/p>\n

In fact, for some religions the gender gap is turned on its head. In Judaism and Islam, men are more likely to attend church than women! What this suggests is that patriarchal religions are more attractive to men (unsurprisingly) and, more importantly, that social factors and not just biology can influence the gender gap.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more to it than this.<\/p>\n

Sullins also found that the gender gap is highest in countries where religion is less important. This is pretty unexpected \u2013 if religion serves a specific social function for women, then you\u2019d expect the gap to be highest where religion is particularly important. One way to explain these findings is that men only take an interest in religion if it is an important part of daily life \u2013 maybe because it will then be important for status building. In countries where religion doesn\u2019t matter, it becomes a low status activity and so is relegated to the female sphere.<\/p>\n

The second surprise comes in the relationship between reported religiousness and reported church going. Remember that these are survey data we\u2019re talking about. An unfortunate flaw with such data is that people tend to tell you what they want to believe about themselves, rather than the reality. This is a particular problem for subjective questions like \u2018How important is religion to you\u2019, and less so for objective questions (Church attendance, for example).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Sullins did uncover some evidence (using GSS data) that this is actually happening. Both men and women report higher levels of \u2018importance of religion\u2019 (on a 6-point scale) than church attendance (on a similar 6-point scale). What\u2019s more, as you move along the \u2018importance of religion\u2019 scale, the bias towards higher church attendance goes up for men and down for women.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: the gender gap is biggest for self-reported religiosity, rather than attendance, and only really exists at low levels of attendance. Could it be that women who don\u2019t go to church still tell people they are religious simply because that is what is expected of them? It\u2019s a distinct possibility, based on these data.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this is too cynical. And anyway, it still seems likely that there is a real gender difference that needs explaining. So Sullins next takes the GSS gender differences at face value, and looks at how can they be explained.<\/p>\n

Here are the potential factors that he looks at:
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