Search results for: “gender equality”

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.

Pew Research Center data on frequency of attendance at worship services are available in 81 countries, where an average of 48% of men and 42% of women report attending worship services at least once a week. However, the pattern of attendance varies considerably across these countries: This distinctive pattern at the country level is largely […]

Another measure of religious commitment is how important people say religion is to them personally. In more than half of the 84 countries where data are available on this question (46), men and women are about equally likely to say religion is very important to them. In 36 other countries, or 43% of the total, […]

Pew Research Center surveys in 63 countries have asked Muslims and Christians about belief in heaven, hell and angels. These data are included in this report as an additional way to examine gender differences in religion. In 47 of the 63 countries (75%), men and women are about equally likely to profess a belief in […]

This appendix provides an overview of the data sources used in the report. It then describes statistical methods used to summarize differences between men and women, including regression analysis methods. Next, it discusses the meaning of the term “gender” in the context of this report. Finally, it concludes with discussion of the thresholds of religious […]