How politics and work are affecting women’s religious practice

The recent Pew Religious Landscape contains both good and bad news for women’s religious participation. The good news is that women are still more religious than men and have not suddenly left religion en masse .

The bad news is that women’s religiosity is approaching men’s levels, and that’s a new phenomenon. So what has changed?

Women have traditionally been more religious than men. According to Pew’s Religious Landscape Survey, women have been more religious than men in each birth cohort until the 1980s. Then, among millennials and younger, the faith gap between genders begins to close. It’s tempting to interpret the narrowing gender gap primarily as evidence that Christian church practices or doctrines are pushing women out the door. For example, conventional theories say women are