ABSTRACT At least since the second wave of the feminist movement, policy issues related to gender have generated deep social and political divisions. Past work has analyzed the role of general religious variables or gender worldviews (such as various forms of sexism), but not the two in combination. To this we add complementarianism—a theological perspective that argues that men and women are essentially different and should occupy God‐given, complementary roles for the benefit of both individuals and the broader culture. Using an original measure of complementarianism in new data, we assess the effects of complementarian beliefs on attitudes about national pronatalism and reproductive rights policies (access to birth control and abortion care). Our findings provide evidence that complementarianism is not simply about gender hierarchies in churches and families but rather has profound implications for preferences about direction of the nation.
Walker et al. (Wed,) studied this question.