TruthBook Religious News Blog

Poll Finds Gender Gap In Beliefs, In Church Attendance And In Practice

By Lynn Doan
September 5, 2007

Kay Bartel and her husband, Fred, went to church every Sunday after they married.

She joined church groups, organized church events and volunteered for church projects.

He put $5 in the offering plate.

"That was the extent of his religion," said Rocky Hill resident Kay Bartel, a 70-year-old Protestant whose husband died in 2000. "He never did do anything else."

Bartel and her husband reflect a persistent, nationwide difference in how women and men view the role of religion in their lives - a difference confirmed in a recent poll of Connecticut residents for The Courant. Thirty percent of women, including Kay Bartel, ranked their religious beliefs as "extremely" important in their lives compared with 22 percent of men in the telephone survey conducted last month by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut.

A significantly larger percentage of women than men also reported attending religious services at least once a week and praying every day, according to the poll, which included the responses of 225 men and 263 women. The margin of sampling error is 4.4 percentage points.

"It's a nationwide phenomenon that women tend to be more spiritual than men," said Monika McDermott, research director of the center.

This "religion gender gap" has baffled experts for decades.

David A. Roozen, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford Seminary, has been studying the gender phenomenon for 40 years, "and I'm still not fully sure why it exists," he said.

"It's just been one of those persistent characteristics of religion in the U.S. that nobody has ever been able to empirically explain," he said. "There have been lots of theories. Back in the '50s, it was because men were in the workplace and women were at home. The workplace was a hard, rash place. Home was a place of nurture."

Then, he said, women joined the workforce and the gender gap remained. Experts began instead attributing the gap to the psychological makeup of men and women but nothing has been scientifically proved, Roozen said.

Manisha Desai, director of the women's studies program at UConn, said women's traditional role as caretakers and "culture-bearers" is what brings them closer to their faiths.

"Women are traditionally the ones who pass down the values of culture and religion," she said, "so they'd of course be more likely to consider their religion more influential in their daily activities, whether it be going to church or watching television."

Thirty percent of women polled said their religious beliefs play a major role in deciding which movies or television programs their families watch compared with 19 percent of men.

Elinor Greenblatt, a poll participant from Norwalk, said she was surprised that the percentages of men who reported attending religious services and praying daily weren't lower. Forty-two percent of men said they pray every day compared with 64 percent of women, and 27.2 percent of men said they attend religious services at least once a week compared with 36.7 percent of women.

"I didn't think there could be that many men [going to religious services]," said Greenblatt, 68, who continued taking her ailing husband to Jewish services in the last years of his life. "If I hadn't pushed it, it wouldn't have happened."

Greenblatt said she even drove her husband every Friday to an Orthodox synagogue, where her presence "didn't count" because she was a woman.

This irony, of some women's fierce loyalty to patriarchal religions, has been the subject of many studies by women's studies experts.

"What we've found is that women can differentiate between the patriarchal religion and the need of all human beings to have a set of beliefs and values as a basis on how to live their lives," Desai said. "We all need music and poetry in our lives, and religion provides the poetry, the music, the companionship, the sharing and the socializing with others."

The Rev. John Gatzak, spokesman for the Hartford Archdiocese, said parishioners also understand that "while we are a church with a male clergy, women have always been the spark of faith that has ignited the hearts of both men and women to take a greater look at God's presence in our lives."

Gatzak said he wasn't surprised at the poll results.

"God speaks to our hearts," he said, "but he takes a lot longer to get through to the heart of a man."

Labels: belief, Center for Survey Research and Analysis, church, Connecticut, gender, God, Lynn Doan, religion, spirituality