Across Europe, women are more religious than men

Gender differences in religiosity are remarkably consistent across Europe. It does not matter whether you are from Greece or the Czech Republic, the Atlas countries whose citizens see themselves as, respectively, most and least religious. In both cases, women are more religious than men:

This gender gap manifests itself in many other ways. It's not just about self-rated religiosity, but also about belief in God, heaven, or hell, as well as the perceived importance of religion in life. And the gap is not only subjective, but also behavioural: women attend religious services more often and, as we can see below, also pray more frequently:

The pattern is therefore not confined to one particular expression of religion: it appears in religious identity, belief, practice, and the personal importance attached to religion. What varies substantially across countries is the overall level of religiosity, but the gender gap itself is strikingly similar and widespread.

Why?

There is no single agreed reason for this gap and the issue is far from settled. One possible explanation is that secularization, the process that made religion lose some of its social significance in the last centuries, was something to which men have been more systematically exposed, through their greater participation in the less religious spheres of paid work and public life. In contrast, women may still be more strongly connected to family and caregiving roles, or forms of community life in which religion tends to remain more important. Another (more controversial) proposed explanation concerns differences in attitudes towards risk: because men tend, on average, to be more willing to take risks, some researchers have suggested that this may make them more willing to depart from religion and its rules and constraints.

In any case, what ends up being surprising is that this gap is persistent across countries that have starkly different religious traditions and overall levels of secularization. This pattern seems to be a broad and persistent social divide in religiosity across Europe, and not a feature of particular churches or societies.