Why are women often more religious when men dominate religious institutions? This paradox--men in the pulpit, women in the pews--and especially the idea that women are inherently more religious has long been treated as a universal fact. In
Is Faith Feminine?, Landon Schnabel shows it's not.
Drawing on cross-national data and original surveys of thousands of Americans--including Muslim, Jewish, and secular oversamples--the book demonstrates that gender gaps vary dramatically across traditions and contexts. Women are more religious than men among Christians, but among Muslims and some other groups, the gap shrinks, disappears, or reverses entirely. To explain this variation, the book develops what Schnabel calls Gendered Incentives and Expectations (GIE) theory, a multilevel framework that distinguishes between individual faith and organized religion and specifies how gendered social and psychological incentives structure religious participation. As the book shows, individual faith and spirituality are often culturally coded as feminine and provide comfort, validation, and meaning, especially for structurally disadvantaged groups. Organized religion, by contrast, is typically masculine--coded, hierarchical, and dominated by men. Incentives and expectations shape who religion appeals to, who participates, and in what ways.
Tracing the political consequences of religion's gendered appeal and why many Americans are disengaging from religious institutions while maintaining personal faith and spirituality,
Is Faith Feminine? offers a new account of religion, gender, and social change in the contemporary United States and beyond.
