This is a question posed by Atheist Hussy, and it’s got my gears a-whirrin’ (feminism + atheism!). Is there a correlation between gender and atheism? The most visible players, including Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, are men (though the former and current president of American Atheists are both women). In the godless liberal blogosphere there’s PZ Meyers, but there’s also Amanda Marcotte. A glance at the responses to this quiz on Mind on Fire (a decidedly unscientific sampling) shows that more women than men are atheists. As I mentally flip through the atheists I personally know, I can think of as many women as men.
This messy anecdotal sampling makes me wonder if the question is more one of perception than reality. Are there fewer female atheists, or does it only seem that way? Perhaps women more likely to be less dogmatic or vocal about their unbelief? I’m not so sure. Can anyone point me to a study or a large survey sample that includes both atheism and gender?
What do you all think?
11 responses so far ↓
1 nee // Jun 1, 2007 at 4:16 am
This doesn’t surprise me. I would say the converse is true as well. I suspect more women than men express their spirituality. Or perhaps it’s more appropriate to say it is more evident - observable expressions of spirituality/faith - in women. Perhaps it is not that more men are atheists but that it’s less observable in women.
As for your personal experience, you’re not the average Joe, er John. Considering that religion and the study thereof is a passion of yours, I suspect you have a span of acquaintances that is much more varied.
2 Miko // Jun 1, 2007 at 8:26 am
I actually think that some brands of feminism breed atheism. (Some brands breed paganism.) Over at Feministing, one of my fav. sites, all the contributors have stated at one time or another that they are not religious…which I suppose doesn’t mean they’re atheists, but they certainly act it most of the time.
Maybe men are just more vocal and end up at the top of the food chain in most arenas, atheist or no.
3 TammyT // Jun 1, 2007 at 9:53 am
You made a good point John - that most of the well-known atheists are men. So maybe, the question should be, why aren’t there more well-known women atheists?
It’s also highly probable that any sampling that we use in our personal lives will be skewed, considering the people we like to hang with. I have a lot of atheist, or agnostic friends - both male and female. But I imagine that my mom does not. She would say that atheists are mostly men.
To a certain extent, it’s more acceptable for men to have a divergent spiritual opinion within an established social group. Whereas, the women a social circle often come together based on their emotions and personal views. To have a different spiritual view would take a special set of women to accept.
The women I hang out with have pretty similar spiritual views as I do. The men, I’m not sure what most of their views. They don’t talk about it much. Even the ones who go to church, I’m not sure if they really “believe”.
I just asked my friend, who is sitting next to me, what he thought of this question and he laughed. “What does it matter?”
He’s agnostic apparently.
4 JOOM // Jun 1, 2007 at 8:48 pm
I am a woman and I am an Atheist! I feel like I have attended an AA meeting! I am outed! I hold on to mysticism, which can bring in a grey area to my beliefs. Do I believe in “A” god or supreme being, no. I do believe in being part of a whole. I am just one part in this life cycle. It is glorious and in the end meaningless to all but myself. I will raise my children to find answers within themselves and work with others around them to make life more fullfilling. Is there a God? Haven’t heard from him in my 34 years of life. If I do, you’ll be the first to know!!
5 C. L. Hanson // Jun 1, 2007 at 11:09 pm
There are high profile female atheists. What about Julia Sweeney? And me?
Let’s say for the sake of argument that there really are fewer female atheists. I can think of a few reasons why that might be the case. (These are just guesses and speculation.)
1. Atheism seems correlated with a strong interest in math and science. Perhaps there are fewer female atheists for the same reason there are fewer women in math-heavy fields (whatever that reason may be).
2. (Related to what other commenters have suggested) Female status is more based on social networking (such as one gets through organized religion), hence whatever qualities motivate people to stick with religion may be more prevalent in women.
3. Boys are more encouraged to question authority; girls are more encouraged to be docile and submit to authority.
I had some of the Mormon characters in my novel speculating about this question as well here, or rather the related question of why there are more single girls than single guys at BYU. (I don’t mean this as a serious guess, but as something a Mormon might think — and shows a little something of my perverse sense of humor ;^) ):
“Everyone knows that even though the holiest people — the prophets and General Authorities and such — are men, the spiritual duds that go inactive and leave the church tend to be men too. Women are more faithful and spiritual on average. It’s kind of like how in school the genius and the flunk-out stoner are usually both boys while the girls all bring home B’s and C’s and end up having a higher GPA on average than the boys. Plus the boys that are the top students are really focused on their careers, so even good Mormon boys will often choose another university over BYU if it has a really good program in this or that specialization. The girls just want to get married, so they go where the boys are. Sure they outnumber the available guys by quite a lot at BYU, but that’s still the place where you’ll find the highest concentration of faithful, marriageable Mormon guys, so we all go there to try our luck.”
6 John // Jun 3, 2007 at 7:38 pm
All of us, waving: “Hi, JOOM! Welcome to Atheists Anonymous.”
Your comments have me wondering: what can be done to make female atheism more acceptable and visible?
7 Miko // Jun 7, 2007 at 10:07 am
“I hold on to mysticism”. I wonder if that’s a common thread among female atheists. I do, too, and wonder if that might make people feel that we are less “atheists” than, say, Dawkins.
Incidentally, CL, I thought you were a guy for the whole time I’ve been reading MoF. And if I’ve ever met you in person, I didn’t make the connection to your online persona. :-p
8 Alon Levy // Jun 10, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Three things:
1. In the US, most atheists are men. I don’t have a cite for it off-hand, but the news articles I’ve read profiling nonreligious Americans say they’re disproportionately white, Anglo, and male (and, I think, registered as Independent but voting Democratic).
2. Atheism is actually not correlated with science. When Massimo Pigliucci was at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, he conducted a survey of the religious beliefs of students based on whether they majored in a humanities subject, a social science, or a natural science. The humanities students were the least religious, followed by the social science students, followed by the science students.
3. The blogosphere isn’t representative of anything. Out of the four bloggers who have some political significance - Kos, Instapundit, Josh Marshall, and Michelle Malkin - two aren’t white, and I’m fairly certain none is particularly religious. And it only gets worse the further down you go. Even bloggers with daily traffic in the five figures don’t really represent anyone but themselves.
9 Miko // Jun 11, 2007 at 9:00 am
I wonder if that is because they are taught how to think in that order. Which is to say, the science students are taught to have a much larger faith in “experts” whereas humanities students to question.
10 Alon Levy // Jun 11, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Yeah, that’s what Pigliucci thought, too. But it’s based on a certain degree of idealization of the humanities and social sciences. What passes for questioning and critical thinking in most social sciences is often substandard. For example, the level of statistics taught in the social sciences is too low to impart any ability to take apart a study that misuses statistics. And both social sciences and humanities subjects are often fraught with postmodernism, hardly the pinnacle of critical thinking.
I think a likelier explanation is political culture. People from conservative cultures are likelier to go into the sciences than into the arts, and also likelier to be religious. They also tend to stop at a B.A., and indeed grad schools are very secular regardless of discipline.
A good way of testing which of the two explanations is true is surveying students’ religious views in freshman year and in senior year. If humanities students are less religious due to the effect of teaching critical thinking, the God gap between science majors and humanities majors will be higher among seniors.
11 Miko // Jun 12, 2007 at 7:41 am
that would definately solve the problem (last paragraph) but I wonder about your statement in the second paragraph, that religious are more likely to be scientific…do you have anecdotal evidence? (of my 5 very religious sisters, I have a psych BA (S?), a math BS, a physics BS, an art history BA, and a classics BA, so while I immediately thought of the math & the physics & thought it supported, now I wonder). If that were the case, what is it about religion that causes people to go toward the sciences?
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