Beneath the Status Characteristic: Gender Variations in Religiousness

For some time, it has been demonstrated that women are more religious than men. Researchers have rarely questioned the validity of this finding. Rather than taking for granted the gender difference, the present study investigated the extent to which one of its underpinnings, a feminine gender orientation, accounted for variations in religiousness. The data from a sample of 358 undergraduates indicated that religiousness is influenced more by a feminine outlook than by being female. More exploratory analyses also revealed that men's gender orientation predicted religiousness more reliably than did women's. The findings suggest that the visibility of some men's religiousness might have been masked until now by a failure to look beneath men's status for variations within gender.