Why are women so religious? Tyler Cowen Here is a passage from Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class:
...the effective middle-class congregation tends...to become a congregation of women and minors. There is an appreciable lack of devotional fervour among the adult males of the middle class...
This peculiar sexual differentiation...is due...to the fact that the middle-class women are in great measure a (vicarious) leisure class. The same is true in a less degree of the women of the lower, artisan classes. They live under a regime of status handed down from an earlier stage of industrial development, and thereby they preserve a frame of mind and habits of thought which incline them to an archaic view of things generally...For the modern man the patriarchal relation of status is by no means the dominant feature of life; but for the women...confined as they are by prescription and by economic circumstances to their "domestic sphere," this relation is the most real and most formative factor of life. Hence a habit of mind favourable to devout observances and to the interpretation of the facts of life generally in terms of personal status. The logic, and the logical processes, of her everyday domestic life are carried over into the realm of the supernatural, and the woman finds herself at home and content in a range of ideas which to the man are in great measure alien and imbecile.
This peculiar sexual differentiation...is due...to the fact that the middle-class women are in great measure a (vicarious) leisure class. The same is true in a less degree of the women of the lower, artisan classes. They live under a regime of status handed down from an earlier stage of industrial development, and thereby they preserve a frame of mind and habits of thought which incline them to an archaic view of things generally...For the modern man the patriarchal relation of status is by no means the dominant feature of life; but for the women...confined as they are by prescription and by economic circumstances to their "domestic sphere," this relation is the most real and most formative factor of life. Hence a habit of mind favourable to devout observances and to the interpretation of the facts of life generally in terms of personal status. The logic, and the logical processes, of her everyday domestic life are carried over into the realm of the supernatural, and the woman finds herself at home and content in a range of ideas which to the man are in great measure alien and imbecile.
That's from chapter XII. The implication is that women in the work force should be less religious, adjusting for income and education. Is that true? Here is Bryan Caplan on said topic. Here is another article. Here is another comment. Here is my previous post on Veblen.
So why are women more religious than men? Is it just greater risk-aversion? March 16, 2007 at 05:34 AM in Religion Permalink Comments (47) marginal revolution
So why are women more religious than men? Is it just greater risk-aversion? March 16, 2007 at 05:34 AM in Religion Permalink Comments (47) marginal revolution
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