The relationship of gender and age to PERCEIVED IMPORtANCE OF religioN and spirituaLITY IN the UK, France and Germany Robinson, O.C. Lorimer, D. Sheldrake, R. Hayward ,G.

BACKGROUND

Religiosity AND GENDER: A cross-cultural universal? Data from the World Values Survey, 1997 (Stark, 2002) Data from Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, Canada, Mexico, USA, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, Japan, Taiwan, China, South Korea, Albania, Turkey, Azerbijan. Question: “Are you a religious person? “ Women higher percentage than men in every country studied, difference was statistically significant in all countries except for Brazil

Religiosity and gender: more FINDINGS Not an artefact of education: Gender differences in religiousness are as large, or larger, among the highly educated as among those with little schooling Not an artefact of career status: Career women are as religious as housewives (Stark, 2002) Could the relationship be with femininity, rather than being female? Possibly: Religiousness is associated with femininity within each gender (Thompson, 1991; Francis, 1997); feminine men more religious than masculine men too

Religiousness and age: LONGITUDINAL FINDINGS #1 Argue et al. 1999 Longitudinal study of 1187 Americans

Religiousness and age: LONGITUDINAL FINDINGS #1 Bengtson et al. 2015: California longitudinal sample: “Results indicate an overall aging effect with an upward drift in religious intensity and strength of beliefs over the adult lifespan, though religious attendance remains generally stable over adulthood until it drops in late life.”

Religiousness and age: LONGITUDINAL FINDINGS #1 McCullough et al (2005) – CLUSTER ANALYSIS 19% 40% 41%

UK: Belief in afterlife 1939 to 2008

UK: Belief in angels by gender, 1995-2010

HYPOTHESES Women would rate religion and spirituality as more important to their lives than men in all three countries, across three age groups – young adults (18-39), midlifers (40-59) and older adults (60+) The perceived importance of spirituality and religion would increase with age in all three countries

METHOD

PROCEDURE AND PARTICIPANTS Data collection: IPSOS-MORI Telephone survey Sample recruited from ‘science-led professions’: Medical and health professions, scientists and mathematicians, technical professions such as computing 1000 individuals recruited from each of three countries UK France Germany

FOCUS OF THIS ANALYSIS 2x3 Univariate ANOVA was conducted RESPONSES TO JUST ONE QUESTION: “Please indicate the importance of religion and / or spirituality in your life” (On a scale of 1 = Unimportant to 4 = Very Important) 2x3 Univariate ANOVA was conducted Gender = 2-Level independent variable Country = 3-Level independent variable Religion / spirituality importance = dependent variable

RESULTS

IMPORTANCE OF RELIGION/SPIRITUALITY by Age and gender Effect of gender: Highly significant P<0.001 Effect of age: P<0.002 UK

IMPORTANCE OF RELIGION/SPIRITUALITY by Age and gender Effect of gender: Highly significant P<0.001 Effect of age: P<0.002 France

IMPORTANCE OF RELIGION/SPIRITUALITY by Age and gender Effect of gender: Non-significant Effect of age: Germany

ATHEISM: PREVALENCE BY COUNTRY

Possible Theoretical Explanations DISCUSSION Possible Theoretical Explanations

Religiousness and age: THEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS Gero-transcendence theory (Tornstam): Increasing self- transcendence and ‘cosmic awareness’ in later life Mortality salience theory (Greenberg): Religion is a way of counteracting the terror of death – this becomes more salient later in life, as death is perceived to be in closer proximity

GENDER: PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS Freud: Women have a more primitive psychology than men; they turn to male priests and a male God due to attraction to the opposite sex parent No: women more involved in non-theistic religions and Goddess religions Risk-taking hypothesis and physiology: Men are more disposed towards risk-taking, and rejection of religion is a risk-taking behaviour, based on Pascal’s wager (adopt religion – no downside after death either way, reject religion – if its true, then you have a problem) Miller and Hoffman (1995): compared men and women who scored similarly on risk aversion, and there was no difference in their religiousness

GENDER: SocialISATION EXPLANATION Gender Role Socialisation theory: The gender roles that males are reinforced in our culture are “agentic”, which means independent, powerful and self-focused. Females in contrasted are socialized to be “communal”, which is being nurturing, sensitive, and more deferential to conventional norms. Collett & Lizardo (2009) - religiosity gender difference in individuals more exposed to gender-egalitarian values while growing up is smaller than that which exists among those raised according to more traditional gender scripts

GENDER AND AGE: JUNGIAN-ALCHEMICAL INTERPRETATION SOL LUNA ANIMUS ANIMA

Interesting Websites http://www.pewforum.org/2016/03/22/the-gender-gap-in- religion-around-the-world/#fn-25285-2 https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/may/16/u k-census-religion-age-ethnicity-country-of-birth