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  2. Women are more fundamentalist because they are more religious

Women are more fundamentalist because they are more religious

By razib on August 7, 2009.

A comment below asks:

Well, good for you for getting me to click through by using an interesting post title. But how do you know women who "know god exists" aren't assuming a female god?

In a vacuum of all knowledge about this sort of topic this is a reasonable question. But there's plenty of social science data showing that American women tend to be more religiously conservative & "orthodox" as a whole than men (in contrast to female ministers or rabbis, who are more likely to be progressive than their male counterparts from what I gather). But I decided to see how textually "conservative" men and women were who "know God exists" (a subset of the population) were in relation to each other. Data below....

Bible Word of God + "Knows God Exists"
Male Female Diff. % Diff. 95-interval male 95-interval female
All 45.1 48 2.9 6% 42.7-47.5 46.1-49.9
White 43.5 44.6 1.1 3% 40.8-46.3 42.5-46.6
Black 53.1 62.2 9.1 17% 47.7-58.6 58.4-66.1
College+ 21 29.5 8.5 40% 17.4-24.6 25.9-33.1
No college 51.2 52.2 1 2% 48.5-53.9 50.1-54.3
Liberal 39.1 42.7 3.6 9% 34.5-43.7 38.3-47
Conserv. 47.7 53.5 5.8 12% 43.7-51.7 50.6-56.5

Since these data had smaller N's than the previous ones I put in the 95 percent confidence intervals. I bolded those with college educations because only in that case do the intervals not overlap. My general conclusion here is the difference in fundamentalism between men and women is more a difference in religiosity, and once men and women reach a certain level of religious commitment there isn't much of a difference in outlook. If I expanded the sample to those who "believe in God but have doubts," the sex difference crops up again, but this is because so many more men than women fall into this category proportionally.

(I checked these results with attitudes toward evolution, and they align well, but the sample sizes were even smaller so I left that out)

Tags
Culture
data
GSS

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This is surprising given the derogatory manner in which the Bible refers to women. Here's an example from the book of Timothy:

In like manner, women also in decent apparel: adorning themselves with modesty and sobriety, not with plaited hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly attire: 10 But, as it becometh women professing godliness, with good works. 11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. 12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence. 13 For Adam was first formed; then Eve. 14 And Adam was not seduced; but the woman, being seduced, was in the transgression. 15 Yet she shall be saved through child bearing; if she continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety.