The Gender Gap in Religion Around the World
Standard lists of history’s most influential religious leaders – among them Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) – tend to be predominantly, if not exclusively, male. Many religious groups, including Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews, allow only men to be clergy, while others, including some denominations in the evangelical Protestant tradition, have lifted that restriction only in recent decades. Yet it often appears that the ranks of the faithful are dominated by women.
1. Women more likely than men to affiliate with a religion
The first indicator of religious commitment examined in this study is religious affiliation, that is, whether people report identifying with a faith group. Among women and men ages 20 and older, 83.4% of women and 79.9% of men across 192 countries and territories are religiously affiliated, according to estimates made for Pew Research Center’s 2015 […]
2. Gender differences in worship attendance vary across religious groups
Pew Research Center data on frequency of attendance at worship services are available in 81 countries, where an average of 48% of men and 42% of women report attending worship services at least once a week. However, the pattern of attendance varies considerably across these countries: In 23 of the 81 nations, men and women […]
3. Women report praying daily at higher rates than men
Another widely accepted indicator of religious commitment is daily prayer. Pew Research Center has collected data on frequency of prayer in 84 countries. In 40 of those countries, there is no significant difference in levels of daily prayer reported by men and women. But in 43 countries (just over 50% of the total), women report […]
4. Religion is equally or more important to women than men in most countries
Another measure of religious commitment is how important people say religion is to them personally. In more than half of the 84 countries where data are available on this question (46), men and women are about equally likely to say religion is very important to them. In 36 other countries, or 43% of the total, […]
5. Women and men about equally likely to believe in heaven, hell and angels
Pew Research Center surveys in 63 countries have asked Muslims and Christians about belief in heaven, hell and angels. These data are included in this report as an additional way to examine gender differences in religion. In 47 of the 63 countries (75%), men and women are about equally likely to profess a belief in […]
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