Are women more religious than men? Gender differences in religious activity among different religious groups in the UK

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Abstract

Are women more religious than men? Four religious-cultural groups in the UK were examined, using a short measure of religious activity developed to enable measurement comparable between different religious groups. Gender differences were examined among volunteers who were self-defined as Christian (n=230), Hindu (n=56), Jewish (n=157) and Muslim (n=87). Women (n=302) described themselves as significantly less religiously active than did men (n=226), but this effect was confined to the non-Christian groups. It is suggested that the general conclusion that women are more religious than men is culture-specific, and contingent on the measurement method used.

Introduction

Are women more religious than men? This has been the general conclusion in the social scientific and psychological literature (Argyle & Beit-Hallahmi, 1975, Batson et al., 1993, Beit-Hallahmi & Argyle, 1997, Brown, 1987, Francis, 1993, Paloutzian, 1996). Thus Batson et al.'s overview, on predominantly Christian samples, reports higher levels of attendance and Bible study among women than among men. Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle concluded that there were higher levels of religious involvement, prayer, experience and overall religiosity among women compared to men, and suggested that these gender differences may be a reflection of greater opportunity among women for religious activity, or perhaps of differences in personality and socialisation.

However, this effect may be culture-specific. Many religious traditions differentiate between the religious obligations of men and women, placing greater onus upon men to fulfil religious duties such as prayer and text study. Traditional Judaism and Islam place less strenuous religious obligations upon women than upon men in some respects, due particularly to the traditional allocation of primary home making and child care responsibilities to women. For example, attendance at a place of religious worship may be less frequent for Jewish and Muslim women compared to men. Jewish women are not required to pray with a congregation, unlike men, so even very observant women may not attend a place of worship. Muslim women should not enter a mosque during menstruation, so the devout woman would be expected to attend a place of worship less often than a man. Women who are occupied with family responsibilities may be less obligated to pray or to engage in religious study. Thus on measures of religious activity, Jewish and Muslim women may appear less “religious” than Jewish and Muslim men. By contrast, studies involving Christian samples have shown that women tend to score higher than do men on measures of religiosity and religious activity. Observations of Hindus suggest that on the whole, women are concluded to be more religiously-active than are men: puja (prayer) is often carried out at shrines in the home by women (Firth, 1997), and Hindu temples are said to be more frequented by women than by men.

This would lead us to expect different effects of gender among Christians and Hindus than among Jews and Muslims. Jewish and Muslim men would appear more religiously active than women. Christian and Hindu women, however, would be expected to be more active than Christian and Hindu men.

To make comparisons between different religious groups involved developing a measure which could be applied meaningfully in different groups.

How has religiosity been measured? It has long been recognised that general religiosity cannot be operationalised and assessed (Glock & Stark, 1965), and more specific behavioural, emotional and cognitive aspects of religion and spirituality need to be identified. Inspection of the measures of religiosity in the excellent collections of Hill and Hood (1999), Maltby, Lewis and Hill (2000), and the ERIC/AE Test Locator (The Buros Institute, 1999) suggest that different researchers have developed measures of religiosity and spirituality to suit their immediate research needs, and virtually all measures of religiosity have been developed in Christian contexts, and are unsuitable for use in other religious traditions. Some researchers have addressed this problem by developing measures useful within particular religious traditions. For example Littlewood and Lipsedge's (1998) Religious Interest Questionnaire has a specific section for Jewish participants, while Khan (2001) and Sitwat (2001) have both developed measures suitable for use with Muslim participants. Such measures comprise mostly questions about religious observance and belief specific to the cultural-religious tradition under study, for example, fasting on Yom Kippur (Jewish) or Ramadan (Islam).

However, researchers who wish to assess religiosity in different religious groups, and to make direct comparisons between groups, have little available to them. This paper involves use of a self-report scale assessing frequency of three behaviours generic to the main world religions: attendance at a place of worship, prayer, and religious study. The scale has been used in investigations of members of different religious groups in the UK, and can be used to make comparisons between members of different religious groups in levels of religious activity. In particular, we asked whether there were gender differences in religious activity among members of the different religious groups.

We had no compelling a priori reasons to expect overall differences on the scale between different religious groups. However, we expected some specific effects of gender on the scale, among the different religious groups, as described above, namely, that Jewish and Muslim women might be less religiously-active than men, while Christian and Hindu women might be more active.

Section snippets

Method and measurement

The study involved a measure of religious activity developed to be applicable in different religious groups, and also to be usable by people who are not religiously active. It comprises three items of religious behaviour regarded as important in the major religious traditions: attendance, prayer and religious study. The measure has been used successfully on groups of Christians, Hindus, Jews, and Muslims in the UK, and among the non-religious. (Kamal & Loewenthal, 2001, Loewenthal et al., 2001,

Results

Table 1 shows the mean scores on the whole scale, and for each of the three individual items, for men and for women, for the four religious groups studied, and for men and women separately within each group.

Analyses of covariance, partialling out the effects of age, showed generally significant effects of gender, religious group, and gender×religious group interaction. What were these effects? First, women reported a lower level of reported religious activity than did men. Second, among

Discussion

Although the meaning and desirability of the different religious behaviours reported in the scale might vary in the different religious traditions, we had no reason to suspect any noteworthy variations between the groups we studied in the UK. The scale was completed readily by all participants, and there were fairly similar overall levels of activity between the different groups studied, although post-hoc comparisons showed significantly higher levels of self-reported religious activity among

Acknowledgements

Some of the work drawn on in this paper here was enabled by funding from the Wellcome Trust (Grant No. 038946/Z/93/Z), by the Economic and Social Research Council (Project Grant No. R000222685) and by the Central Research Fund of London University. Many thanks are due to these bodies. Many thanks are also due to the research participants, and to the research interviewers for their hard work and enthusiasm in collecting the information used here: Dr. Susan Cook, Vivienne Goldblatt, Guy Lubitsh,

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