Comments on: Why are women (slightly more) religious?

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:08:01 +0000

Did the survey control for other demographic factors? I think things like anxiety and poverty tend to correlate with higher degrees of religiosity, so I wonder if this difference can’t just be accounted for by the fact that women are more likely to be poor and have more to be anxious about.

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:52:26 +0000

Jason, all top-down control hierarchies give those few at the top an advantage over all of the many below them.

By: Jason Failes

Jason Failes — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:28:59 +0000

The bigger question is why *any* women at all are religious, given the treatment they are given in the major monotheistic religions.

I can see why a person would follow a religion that gave them an advantage over others in society, but to follow a religion that assigns you sub-human rights? Completely baffling.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:15:32 +0000

Sample size looks pretty big but was it done within the USA only! … It ain’t called the “American Religious Identification Survey” for nothin!

By: kaberi

kaberi — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:17:49 +0000

Sample size looks pretty big but was it done within the USA only! I think culture plays a big role and also the upbringing… if you are brought up as a subdued, submissive girl and then even when you are an adult, you have harder time to get out of the fear of not to believe in some super power to control you. Perhaps that is why you see a lot of women who are successful in life and well of economically still believe in some form of GOD! And it is vary between culture as I said before. My unscientific example comes from India… In South India you see lot more men are religious than in North or East and it does not matter what socio-economic or educational background you come from!

By: DRK

DRK — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:06:20 +0000

Recently there was a paper published in Evolutionary Psychology showing a correlation between a nation’s degree of economic and social insecurity and its degree of religiosity; the US has a high rate of both, for instance.

http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf

In general, women experience more poverty and economic instability than men. Perhaps they are more religious than men as a result.

By: MadScientist

MadScientist — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:30:31 +0000

My guess would be “more easily victimized by religion as a child”, but who knows.

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:14:31 +0000

I think the effect is real and reflects actual differences in physiology which I will try to explain (briefly and simplistically). This relates to my work on autism and NO and relates to the gender differences observed in the incidence of autism. I am not putting a value judgment on this difference. As I understand it, the increased ability of females to be social comes at the cost of being more susceptible to socially mediated persuasion. Resistance to â??peer pressureâ? is (I think) one of the major features of being on the autism spectrum.

Fundamentally I think it relates to different basal NO levels. The estrogen receptor causes activation of nitric oxide synthase and premenopausal women have higher basal NO levels (on average) than do men. This is reflected in their reduced susceptibility to cardiovascular disease.

Many social neural pathways use NO as a neurotransmitter, for example oxytocin. High NO levels tend to facilitate social neuronal activity. The archetypal social activity (maternal bonding) is mediated by NO. If nitric oxide synthase is blocked, ewes do not bond to their lambs. If NOS is blocked and NO is supplied, they do. Maternal bonding uses NO as a mediating agent so that the fidelity of that bonding can be coupled to energy status. Lactation is so energy intensive that the fidelity of bonding must be coupled to energy status.

As the smaller gender, females are forced to act like George Bernard Shawâ??s â??reasonable manâ? and conform themselves to the world, or be killed by those males whose world they do not conform to. I think this is the basis for Stockholm Syndrome. The woman (Jaycee Dugard) who was recently released from 18 years of captivity and reportedly has â??mixedâ? feelings about it and her captors is an example of this (I think).

I donâ??t think it at all has to do with being more gullible or stupid. I think it is specifically about women having been selected for believing what men say. How many children have been born because a woman believed what a â??playerâ? told her? That selects for men who are good at lying and women who are good at believing the lies that such men tell them. Given that the religions under discussion are patriarchal, it makes sense that women would be more â??religiousâ?. That the apparent difference is only 7% I find remarkable. It must be really detrimental for a woman to believe a “player”.

By: k

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:07:19 +0000

John Swindle: my completely unscientific observation that most rowdy behavior comes from men, most criminals are men, most jerks are men

They are indeed, but it’s no mystery why jerks tend to be male – or perhaps rather, why men tend to be bigger jerks than women. Men are under more pressure to be assertive, strong, confident, leading, authoritative etc. Which is a very small step away from being an overbearing jerk.

Women are under more pressure to be submissive, dependent, to subdue their intellect and their passions etc.

So if atheism is a position both of reason and emotional strength (at least in a theistic society) it’s not surprising that women are more superstitious.

I wonder which is easier to defeat – subtle pervasive sexism or gibbering religion?

By: John Swindle

John Swindle — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:19:32 +0000

Years ago, when I was a theist, I noticed that more women than men attended the religious events that I went to. I thought it confirmed my assumption that women are more upright than men. It goes hand-in-hand with my completely unscientific observation that most rowdy behavior comes from men, most criminals are men, most jerks are men. People usually behave in ways they consider proper, if not burdened with a Y-chromosome. I’m surprised it’s only 7%.