| XY - Why Are Women More Religious? - Fall 08 |
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| Written by Gord Sellar | |||||||
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Is there a reason that women are more enthusiastic about their religious convictions than men? While many scientific studies have been directed (by those who would, doubtless, have us join their religions) to determine the positive effects of religiosity on believers, one fascinating fact has been somewhat less firmly addressed in sociological and psychological research, which is why women, on the whole, are more religiously-inclined than men. This suggestion, by the way, would have left many men of the past in shock. If you've ever read any literature from the Middle Ages, you'll remember characters like Chaucer's Wife of Bath, who were emblematic of the worst stereotypes of women at the time. Their irreligiosity was widely assumed, despite the many women who lived as nuns and anchorites in Europe, and the suggestion that women were, indeed, more strongly religious than men would have provoked laughter or mockery. Yet we know now that women are, in general, more religious than men. Which is not to say that all women are thoroughly devout and all men are utterly irreverent, of course. Many men are quite seriously religious and a number of women are not religious at all. But studies have shown fairly reliably that by every measure, in general, women in the modern Western world exhibit stronger religious impulses than men: they are more religious in general, they take their religions more seriously when compared with religious men, and they are more ardent in the transmission of religion to their children. Few researchers have dared asked why, perhaps because the answers, should they appear to be biological in origin, may be discomfiting. Several have made the inevitable argument that it is the effect of social expectations that has caused this state of affairs. Social expectations of greater devotion on the part of women could lead to many women playing the expected role. This suggestion ignores one very potent challenge: the fact that stronger female religiosity seems consistent cross-culturally and in different religions. Although most organized religions have been dominated by men (sometimes shockingly so), their most ardent devotees seem to be women, regardless of the opportunity costs of membership in a religious organization. By now, you must be asking yourself, "Does he mean to suggest that women are biologically predisposed to greater religiosity?" I do not, not straightforwardly, anyway. Although some sort of belief in the supernatural is doubtless a long tradition in human beings, it is unlikely that religion and evolution have interacted deeply. Religion, after all, arose very recently in geological time. Our primate ancestors had little or none of the religious ideas we have today. Perhaps in certain cultures, a deeper tendency to faith might have historically served as a means of survival, but it's unlikely that heartfelt religiosity would have aided in reproduction or that the lack of it would have impeded reproduction, since humans are consummate fakers. Still, human beings are a part of nature and everything we do--music, art, war, genocide, poetry, and reading magazines--we do in part because of how we evolved. We read magazines, for example, because we are gregarious creatures, creatures that have evolved a language for communication, and creatures that have a deep interest in what other people around us think and feel. If we could suddenly give a lizard an IQ of 150, it probably would not read Cahoots, or watch TV, or surf the internet, or even care to discuss its thoughts and feelings with us. We would probably experience the lizard the way we do sociopaths, because most lizards simply did not evolve as gregarious creatures. But is there a biological basis of religion? Well, that's a complex question, and different people will offer you different answers. (Stephen Pinker once quipped in a lecture I attended that God probably lives somewhere in the right frontal cortex.) But whether or not you believe in a god, or gods, or God, one thing that's hard to deny is that humans are predisposed to certain kinds of "religious" beliefs, and not to others. People believe in things like gods, ancestor spirits, demons, pantheons, and so on. Even if we do not ourselves believe in polytheistic religions, they immediately make a kind of sense to us. In contrast, people simply do not believe in things like a magical deific teapot secretly orbiting the sun and controlling all things, or a holy eternal chipmunk nestled at the core of the earth, watching our every move. If you think of all the possible (and impossible) religions in the world, you'll realize that only a small number of them "work" for people. It's as if, in computer terms, our mental "OS" cannot run programs (religions) not designed for it, while programs that are designed for human minds are breathtakingly easy to install. Also, as Richard Dawkins argues, they spread like computer viruses. But whether or not you agree with Dawkins, cognitive anthropologist Pascal Boyer's arguments in his book Religion Explained (Basic Books, 2001) certainly help to suggest ways in which the religions we have are the ones that fit best with our psychology as it has evolved. I won't regurgitate all of his arguments here, but instead I will suggest one connection that Boyer himself did not make: If religions are most popular because they fit with human psychology, then why are monotheistic religions featuring patriarchal gods or saviours so immensely popular with women? Of course, Hindus and some Buddhists will protest, noting that their religions have pantheons of gods with plenty of goddesses. Important goddesses, yes, and perhaps it is true that among these diverse pantheons, some measure of egalitarianism can be found. Yet even so, the Buddha is male (along with most monks in most traditions) and many of the most popular Hindu deities are revered in male aspects. Meanwhile, at least in the Western world, Christians, Muslims, and religious Jews worship a God who is undeniably, for all that scripture may here or there muddy the waters, male, and who, reimagined in feminine form, has not attained any degree of popularity by the few who have promoted the idea. Not only is the God of the religions of the book often called father, but he also behaves like a stern patriarch (often spoken for by other patriarchs) throughout much of historical scripture. Indeed, I have great deal of difficulty imagining a motherly Yahweh setting Sodom and Gomorrah aflame, or offering her son as a sacrificial lamb to cleanse humanity of their sins. Yet it is within these latter three belief systems that studies have found women to be more religious than men. These are religions dominated not only by a male deity or deities, but also by male spokespersons, male priestly hierarchies, and scripture that very often seems wholly written by men, for men! It beggars belief...until, that is, one considers evolution and psychology. It's been widely observed that male and female sexual psychology differ, which one would expect considering our differing reproductive roles. Neolithic men had little to lose by (sneakily) inseminating as many women as possible. Stable or not, trustworthy or not, the more women inseminated, the more chances that a child would survive. Even better, resource-wise, if it were to be raised by some other man. Such a reproductive strategy led to a fairly simple focus on traits for short-term female attractiveness, most of them obviously physical, and most of them now handled by the women's fashion and cosmetics industries. Yet for women, the (actual and potential) costs of pregnancy have always immensely higher. A choice of partner would come, in women, to be guided by a host of criteria including physical features, but also dependability, apparent ability to provide sustenance and protection, and so forth. When they cheat, women cheat with men who look good, above all (along lines of short-term attraction, though wealth and power even here may come into play), but when they form long-term relationships, it is these other considerations that predominate. Perhaps it is these same psychological predilections that explain many womens' attraction to these male-centric religions. The idea of a male god might seem abhorrent to intellectual feminists, but if we look at the writing of female Medieval mystics, we discover very odd patterns: wedding ceremonies with Christ as the bridegroom, and even strangely sexually charged descriptions of manifestations of Jesus. I'm not suggesting that women are sexually attracted to the stern paternal nature of Yahweh, of course, that would be too simplistic, but if we go back to the metaphor of computer software, it may be that religious ideas of this kind exploit very old, very deeply-coded patterns of thought that, in fact, for evolutionary reasons, differ between women and men. If women are coded to be attracted to strong, powerful, loving providers, is not the ultimate psychological button-pusher a male character who exhibits these traits to a supernatural or indeed utterly transcendent degree? Likewise, this may be why so many males are relatively less invested in religion. For all those whom the deities act as powerful father figures, one can imagine the tensions arising in the writings of men like Kierkegaard and Augustine as perhaps being less akin to "daddy issues" and more like those tensions arising between a man and his perceived competition for the affections of potential mates. In other words, it may be that because of, and not despite, the male-centeredness of many major religions that so many women respond so much more ardently than men to the call of faith. But of course, this is all speculation. Comments (2)
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