Gender and religiosity

Israel is the sole country in which a higher percentage of men than women reported engagement in daily worship, public or private.

By CAROLINE KAHLENBERG
Updated: APRIL 6, 2016 18:40
Percentage of Israeli Jews ages 20 and over who reported that they prayed always or frequently, by religious identification, 2009 (photo credit: JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR ISRAEL STUDIES)
Percentage of Israeli Jews ages 20 and over who reported that they prayed always or frequently, by religious identification, 2009
(photo credit: JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR ISRAEL STUDIES)
A new study released last week by the Pew Research Center found that around the world and across religions, women are generally more religious than men are.
“The Gender Gap in Religion around the World” found that in all 84 countries studies, women are more or equally likely as men to engage in daily prayer.
Israel is the sole outlier in this trend: The only country surveyed in which a higher percentage of men than women reported engagement in daily worship, public or private.
This gender difference also exists in other categories relating to religious practice here. Another recent Pew survey on Israeli society showed that Israeli Jewish men reported higher engagement in religious activities than women; while 37 percent of them attend synagogue weekly or more, only 18% of their female counterparts do the same. These gender gaps in religious activity may be partly attributed to certain norms in Judaism that prioritize men’s attendance in worship over women’s.
Notably, however, the gap does not exist only with regard to worship attendance: Even among activities not tied to male-only commandments, Israeli Jewish men were often recorded as being religiously engaged at a slightly higher rate than Israeli Jewish women. For example, 64% of Israeli Jewish men fasted all day last Yom Kippur, while 57% of Israeli Jewish women did the same. These women are also more likely to travel on Shabbat (65%) compared to their male counterparts (59%).
As to the importance of religion in one’s life, Israel also stood as an outlier in the Pew survey: 35% of Israeli Jewish men reported that religion was “very important” to them, as compared to only 25% of Israeli Jewish women. In all other countries surveyed (aside from Mozambique), women were recorded as more or equally likely as men to consider religion as personally very important. Notably, among American Jews, these differences were not as apparent.
The gender gap is also evident (though narrow) in Israeli religious identification, as per the Central Bureau of Statistics’ annual social survey. Israeli Jewish men defined themselves (or were defined by criteria such as school system and residential neighborhood) as ultra-Orthodox (9.8%) or religious (10.9%) at a slightly higher rate than Jewish women (8.4% as ultra-Orthodox and 10.3% as religious). At the same time, Jewish women were more likely to identify as traditional (39.3%) than Jewish men (33.8%). Yet when we take a look at the breakdown of religious practice according to religious sector, the data reveal a more complicated picture: Rates of prayer among Jews not defined as Orthodox or religious show the gender gap narrowing and even reversing as the sector becomes more secular.
According to the social survey, among Israeli Jews defined as “traditional- religious,” 89.1% of men reported they prayed always or frequently, as compared to 64.9% of women. Among those defined as “traditional but not so religious,” this gap hardly existed: 38.9% of men and 37.6% of women attended prayer. Among those defined as secular, the trend reversed: Women reported praying always or frequently (12.7%) at a higher rate than men (8.2%).
Moreover, this overall religious gender gap does not hold true for members of other religions in Israel. According to the CBS data, women of other faiths (the majority being Muslim) identify as more religious than their male counterparts: 65.4% identified as very religious or religious, as opposed to only 45.1% of men.