Belief gender gap 'pragmatic'

FAITH: People are generally born into their religions.PHOTO/AP

DID you hear about the agnostic dyslexic insomniac? She lay awake all night wondering if there was a Dog.

But she's a pretty rare bird. According to a survey carried out in Britain by Professor David Voas of the University of Essex, more than half of British men now in their early 40s (54 per cent) are agnostics or atheists, but only one-third of women of the same age (34 per cent) hold similar views.

The gender difference was even more striking when the 9000 respondents were asked about their belief in a life after death. Only 35 per cent of the men said they believed that there was some kind of survival beyond the grave, but 60 per cent of women said they did. That's a difference of almost two-to-one in the level of belief among people who, otherwise, have similar backgrounds. Hmm ...

Now this is obviously a topic on which a wise commentator would be wary of offering an opinion - much safer to keep your mouth shut and write about something else. That may explain why this whole question about gender differences in the belief in God came as a surprise to me, because when I looked into the literature it turns out that the social scientists have known about it for years.

There is a thriving academic industry dedicated to proposing reasons for this huge belief gap. One theory holds that men are just more likely to be risk-takers (except Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century French philosopher, whose famous "wager" stated that we should live our life as if God exists in order to escape an eternity of torture in Hell, and if He turns out not to exist, we haven't really lost all that much. It was a breakthrough in probability theory).

Another theory is that men who score relatively high on the autism scale are also more likely to be atheists or agnostics. But that doesn't really get us very far, since the great majority of men are not autistic, and yet a majority of British men don't believe in God.

Belief in God is much higher in the United States, although it is dropping rapidly. A Harris poll in 2009 found that 82 per cent of Americans had never doubted the existence of God; the same poll in 2014 found that the number had fallen to 74 per cent. This is due almost entirely to a fall in belief among younger Americans: a Pew poll of "millennials" in 2007 found that 83 per cent were believers; the same poll in 2012 found only 68 per cent.

But the gender gap in belief also exists in the US, although it is less dramatic: 77 per cent of American women say they have an absolutely certain belief in a God or universal spirit, but only 65 per cent of American men say the same. Indeed, the gap exists in every country of the developed world, although there are intriguing national differences in how wide it is.

In former West Germany, where 48 per cent of the population believe in God, the gap between men and women is 8 percentage points. In former East Germany, the cradle of the Protestant Reformation, where four decades of communist rule eroded the hold of Christianity on the population, only 16 per cent believe in God - but the gap between men and women is less than 3 percentage points; 58 per cent of Russians believe in God, but the gender gap is bigger than it is in Britain: 25 percentage points. Whereas in Turkey, a relatively developed Muslim country where almost 95 per cent of the population believe in God, there is no difference at all between the beliefs of men or women.

What are we to make of all this? Start with the fact that decisions of this sort are rarely made on an entirely rational basis.

Just as the great majority of believers everywhere never chose their original religious beliefs - they were just born into them - so any later changes in their beliefs are probably driven more by their personal circumstances than by conscious choice. Consider the difference between the two Germanies, for example.

So what are the differences between the personal circumstances of men and women that might lead to different outcomes in terms of belief?

That will obviously vary from one country to another, but women still suffer greater social and economic disadvantages than men almost everywhere.

If you have less control over the course of your own life, then belief in an all-powerful God who is just, and will ultimately put all the injustices right, is an attractive proposition. In that case, the gender gap in belief is neither intellectual nor emotional. It's simply pragmatic.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries