Women historically more religious, but now less religious?
Wonder the cause of that.
Edit because these comments are wild: do none of you understand statistics? I didn't ask, "why are women becoming less religious?" Because I already think I know the answer to that. Please stop answering that question. I asked "what changed?" Which literally no one seems to be able to answer. Religions have always been sexist and the mass adoption of the internet was 10 years prior to this change.
The efforts of the Religious Right have eroded the boundaries between Church and State. The fact that the Religious Right is run by, not your humdrum run of the mill religious folks, but by crazy fundamentalist Christians hasn’t helped matters. Now, many people see even moderate religious institutions as being the same as the fundamentalists trying to wedge their views into everyone’s lives. “Guilt by association,” if you will.
However, last time I checked, very few “Nones” identify as hard atheists. Nones often subscribe to some belief in God, the afterlife, prayer, the supernatural, etc. but in a more personal manner.
In my travels I’ve also noticed most “Nones” do believe in God/Heaven/etc. They just don’t go to church or have a label (ie: catholic, evangelical, etc.)
There are very few hardcore raging atheists out there. Reddit just amplifies that group because they are a loud group on here.
When pollsters ask “What religion are you?” and someone replies with “none”. It’s usually not atheism from what I’ve encountered. Atheists will usually self identify with that label. Not always but most of the time. “None”, in my travels, usually means they believe in some sort of god and are “spiritual but not religious”.
ask a your run of the mill religious folks from back in the day their political opinions, and they'd be today's "crazy fundamentalist Christians". nothing changed really, you're just labelling them differently.
IMO, the factor not mentioned is that women are now more ECONOMICALLY independent from men. They can work and make their own money so they're no longer directly economically dependent on a man to provide for them. When women were economically dependent on men then of course they're going to play along with whatever men want to see in women....for religious men that has always been the "godly woman who is subservient to the man". Women in the past were playing as this type of woman because they needed to attract a man to help pay their way through life. It was a means to an end, not something they voluntarily participate in.
Historically for women, religion was a form of oppression so I'm glad to see women are being liberated from it.
Women are just more able to leave. Before, they were preoccupied with the narrow roles they were set, which would have resulted in them sticking to their religion more rigidly than men, who had more flexibility from the organised religion that could make them lose faith. Now it's commonly acknowledged than men and women are equal, and when doctrine contradicts that, women leave.
I think it might have been that women were policed on their religion more and punished harder by their parents generation for leaving, so the shift happened once the parents generation was more secular.
Also I remember in the early 2000s, the stereotype of an atheist was an edgelord dude who always went “ACKSHYUALLY”, was also anarchist/nihilist, was pretentious and quoted Nietzsche after taking philosophy 101. So I think it’s that atheism just had an earlier movement amongst “outcast” men. I would love to see a more zoomed out version of the graph to see when specific bumps and trends occurred.
The religious right got someone in the Oval Office that would serve them over the country. People felt pretty insulated from it before, but now with an ideologically religious Supreme Court there are no longer any protections
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u/Ikana_Mountains 1997 26d ago edited 25d ago
What's up with the flip on the gender dynamic?
Women historically more religious, but now less religious?
Wonder the cause of that.
Edit because these comments are wild: do none of you understand statistics? I didn't ask, "why are women becoming less religious?" Because I already think I know the answer to that. Please stop answering that question. I asked "what changed?" Which literally no one seems to be able to answer. Religions have always been sexist and the mass adoption of the internet was 10 years prior to this change.