Why the fairer sex is a little closer to God

Christianity has more women believers partly because they hate to take risks, writes

WHEN my son was in hospital recently, suffering from encephalitis and fighting for his life, I offered up a small, embarrassed prayer. It went something like this: “Dear God, I’m really sorry for not believing in you, and I know I haven’t prayed to you since 1989, when that canal boat we were on nearly fell down a weir, but please, please don’t let my boy die.” And lo! On the 10th day he rose from his bed in hospital and walked again.

Now that the danger has passed, I can say with confidence that God had nothing to do with it. Even if He exists, He doesn’t get involved in matters of live and death: you only have to pick up a newspaper to see that. And anyway, I don’t believe in God. I really, almost definitely, don’t. So is it just muscle memory — a reflex from my Catholic childhood — that makes me turn to Him in times of peril? Or could it be something in my chromosomes?

A new global study of religion and gender by the Pew Research Centre has found that women are more religious than men. In Britain, women are 5% more likely than men to go to church regularly, and 9% more likely to pray every day. This sort of pattern is echoed all over the world: from Africa to Alaska, “the ranks of the faithful are dominated by women”.

That is certainly true in my family. My sister and I come from an unbroken line of female Catholics, all married to heathens. My father, like my husband, thinks religion is just an eccentricity — sometimes alarming, mostly gently amusing. He put up with it when I was little because it seemed to matter to my mother.

I can only remember her missing Mass once in the whole of my childhood, when she was too ill to get out of bed. She rang our priest in despair, and the next day he turned up on our doorstep carrying a lifesize plastic model of the Virgin Mary. He staggered into the hallway, dragged the Madonna halfway up our staircase, and then summoned us all to kneel at the bottom and pray. Thus was spiritual starvation averted.

Not all religions have this effect on the ladies. The Pew study shows that, among Muslims and Orthodox Jews, men are just as pious as women (more so, if observance is measured by attendance at places of worship). It is Christianity that appeals most to women, and always has.

Right from the start, the Christian church attracted slightly more female converts than male. Admittedly, this was largely because the alternatives were so awful. Roman ladies liked Christianity because it outlawed the widespread practices of infanticide (which mostly killed female babies) and abortion (which could be ordered by the male head of the household, and often proved fatal).

Ironically, the church’s emphasis on female sexual purity was liberating for women. Roman girls were generally married off young, and without getting a say in the matter. But if they converted to Christianity they were not just allowed, but positively encouraged, to reject male suitors. They could even choose to remain celibate their whole lives, thus avoiding the messy and dangerous business of procreation altogether. Converting to Christianity was a drastic method of birth control.

These days, we have the pill. So why are women still more susceptible to religion? Some scientists believe it’s a simple matter of hormones. Men have higher levels of testosterone, which encourages risk-taking. They are willing to take a gamble on there being no deity and no afterlife. Female hormones, by contrast, make us cautious and forwardthinking. Even if our brains say “Religion is bunkum”, our hormones say “Shhhh now, let’s not annoy the Big Guy, just in case”.

There’s one more thing that scientists and sociologists tend to overlook. Women get closer to birth and death than men do. Once you’ve heaved another living being out of your own body, you start to think maybe the universe is pretty mysterious after all. The same is true of nursing the dying — a role that has historically been women’s work — and raising children.

It is, I think, no coincidence that my mother’s Catholicism lapsed as soon as my sister and I left home. One week she missed confession. The next week she said there was no point going to Mass because she hadn’t been to confession. And then — pfft! — her faith was gone. I guess it’s easier to gamble on your own afterlife than on your children’s. — ©