Gender

Women are more likely than men to say they attend worship services regularly. But this gap in church attendance has been narrowing in recent decades, as the share of women attending weekly has declined.

The nation’s largest annual demography conference, the Population Association of America meeting, featured new research on topics including couples who live in separate homes, children of multiracial couples, transgender Americans, immigration law enforcement and how climate change affects migration.

Many countries have laws that ban or limit women from wearing religious attire in public places. By comparison, far fewer countries require women to wear particular types of attire for religious reasons.

While Christian women are on the whole more religious than Christian men, Muslim women and Muslim men have similar levels of religious commitment. And when it comes to attendance at worship services, Muslim men are more active than Muslim women.

A discussion with David Voas of the Department of Social Science at University College London on the gender gap in religion around the world.

Generally, women are more likely than men to be affiliated with a religious organization; women also pray more, and are more inclined to say religion is “very important” in their lives.

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.

Gender equality is among the most widely accepted democratic principles around the world.

We looked at nine major religious organizations in the U.S. that both ordain women and allow them to hold top leadership slots.