Secularization and Gender: A Global Study of The Effects of Women’s Employment on Religious Decline

The role of women, and in particular their participation in the labor force, is an understudied factor in explaining patterns of secularization. This study draws on aggregated cross-national data to examine the relationship between women’s employment and religiosity. Using longitudinal regression models, the findings indicate that increases in women’s employment are associated with declines in religiosity—a result that holds after controlling for relevant covariates. These broad findings apply to the West, to a variety of other cultural-religious contexts, but not to nondemocratic societies. The relationship between women’s employment and secularization aligns with the assertion that aspects of modernization are associated with weaker religious commitment and that women hold the primary responsibility for religious socialization and for maintaining religion in the family sphere. This study thus shows that the structural position of women in the family and the economy is integral to understanding religious decline in the contemporary world.