Women’s generally greater level of religiosity has been observed by scholars for decades; it

has shown up in surveys going back as far as the 1930s. But not until the 1980s did

academics begin a concerted effort to find an explanation for the phenomenon. Initially, some

scholars assumed women were universally more religious across all religions and cultures.

This assumption was likely reinforced by the early concentration on patterns of religious

behavior in predominantly European and North American countries with large Christian

populations. Gradually, however, as studies paid increasing attention to other faiths and

countries, different patterns of gender differences were detected. Researchers began to find

that while women generally were more religious than men, this was not always the case.

More than three decades of research have yielded a large quantity of data and a greater

appreciation for the complexities of the relationship between gender and religion –

complexities reflected in the data presented in this report. But a definitive, empirically based

explanation of why women generally tend to be more religious than men remains elusive.

Indeed, as two experts recently wrote, this widely observed pattern is still “a genuine

scientific puzzle.”

Here is a brief summary of some leading theories proffered by experts who have examined

the religious gender gap. The explanations generally fall into three broad categories: nature,

nurture or a combination of both.

Nature explains it

Under the “nature” umbrella are theories that variously attribute gender differences in

religious commitment to physical or physiological causes such as hormones, genes or

biological predispositions.

For example, Baylor University sociologist Rodney Stark postulates that men’s physiology –

specifically their generally higher levels of testosterone – accounts for gender differences in
religion. His argument rests on what he views as increasing evidence that testosterone is

associated with men’s greater propensity to take risks, which he argues is why men are

less religious than women. By inference, women are more religious because they have less

risk-promoting testosterone.

Stark’s theory elaborates on an earlier thesis introduced by sociologists John P. Hoffman of

Brigham Young University and the late Alan S. Miller. They noted that men appear to have a

greater innate tendency to take risks, and therefore are more willing than women to gamble

that they will not face punishment in the afterlife. As a result, men are less religious. Since

women are generally more risk-averse, this theory posits, they turn to religion to avoid eternal

punishment or to secure a place in heaven. Unlike Stark, Hoffman and Miller do not assign a

specific source for men’s greater willingness to take risks.

Baylor University’s Matt Bradshaw and Christopher G. Ellison of the University of Texas at

San Antonio argue for more exploration of genetic factors. Some studies of biological

influences on religious life, they write, suggest that “genetic differences account for roughly a

third of the variation” among individuals in various aspects of personal religious devotion.

While the two sociologists recognize a role for social and environmental influences, they

contend that “biological predispositions remain a viable, and untested, explanation for gender

differences in religiosity.”

Still within the nature framework, Jeremy Freese of North western University and James D.

Montgomery of the University of Wisconsin postulate that psychological differences could

throw light on gender differences in religiosity. They advocate for more research into which

psychological aspects are most influential on religious devotion and how differences are

shaped by genes and social environments. In particular, they would like to see more

investigation into how personality traits typically associated with “femininity” and

“masculinity” relate to gender differences in religiosity. As an example of this type of

religiosity of 358 American undergraduates who had completed self-profiles using

stereotypical feminine and masculine personality traits. Thompson found that “religiousness

is influenced more by a ‘feminine’ outlook than by being female.”

Nurture explains it

In the nurture category are theories that seek to explain the religious gender gap by such

factors as socialization into traditional gender roles, lower rates of female workforce

participation and national economic structures.

University of Aberdeen’s Marta Trzebiatowska and Steve Bruce, for example, contend that

“nothing in the biological make-up of men and women explains the gendered difference in

religiosity.” These differences, the two sociologists write, are better explained by “an

amalgam of different social facts” that include women’s dominant role in childbirth and

death, which keeps women “closer to religion than men.” Another factor they cite is men’s

pressure on women to be religious as a way to control female sexuality.

But the dominant reason for the gender gap, in the view of Trzebiatowska and Bruce, is the

“time lag” in the way secularization in modern times has affected men and women. Men’s

pre-eminent roles in the workforce and public life meant they “were generally affected earlier

than women by the secularizing forces that reduced the plausibility of religious beliefs and

turned religious rectitude from a necessary condition for citizenship into a personal

preference,” the two write. As women become more like men in activities outside the home,

they theorize, women also may become more similar in levels of religiousness. Indeed, the

authors speculate that the religious gender gap may eventually disappear entirely, as gender

roles become more alike and gender equality becomes more commonplace: “Enough women

are now free of the social roles that coincidentally brought them into the orbit of organized
religion to destroy the web of expectations that disposed them to be more favourable, as a

class, to religion.”

In a related vein, researchers have looked at how women’s place in society, especially their

rates of workforce participation, might affect their religious commitment. Based on 1983 data

from Australia, sociologist David de Vaus of the Australian Institute of Family Studies and

political scientist Ian McAllister of Australian National University report that lower rates of

female labor force participation “are the major cause” of women’s greater religious

commitment. Indeed, they find that full-time female workers are not only less religious than

women who do not work, but also display a religious orientation similar to men. Work

outside the home, the two hypothesize, could provide “sociopsychological benefits”

otherwise gotten from religion and “makes religion less important and less relevant for some

people.”

A somewhat different interpretation for working women’s lower religious commitment

emerges from recent studies in the U.S. by Indiana University-Bloomington sociologist

Landon Schnabel. He suggests that women in the labor force, particularly those in high-

paying, full-time jobs, are less religious because they receive less social validation and

affirmation from religious congregations compared with women who follow more gender-

typical roles and expectations.

Social scientists David Voas, Siobhan McAndrew and Ingrid Storm, who are at the

University College London and the Universities of Bristol and Manchester, respectively,

argue that in Europe, the gender gap decreases (but does not disappear) with modernization.

But they contend that the narrowing gap is due more to rising national income per capita than

to secularization or growing gender equality. As women gain more security through

economic development, “the appeal of religious commitment fades,” they write, adding that
“it is also possible that with economic growth, women’s values converge with those of men

in terms of secularity and rationality.”

A synthesis

The nature versus nurture debate is not likely to be settled anytime soon. The “nature”

theories that focus on physical, biological or genetic differences between men and women

have not found a measurable factor that has been definitively linked to greater religiosity.

And the “nurture” theories that pinpoint social factors as the principle mechanism in

explaining the religious gender gap all face a problem: Despite the vast social changes and

gender role transformations of recent decades, the religious gender gap persists in many

societies. As a result, contemporary scholars of religion seem increasingly to be converging

on a consensus that the religious gender gap most likely arises from a complicated mix of

multiple factors. As one scholar put it, “greater insight into gender differences in

religiousness lies … in the acceptance of complexity