Which religions do men and women prefer? 🧙

It’s fairly obvious if you think about it.

In November I wrote about how religious men and women are. You can read that blog here, but the quick version is that men are less religious, much like younger people, and the details play out in some surprising and revealing ways.

I didn’t look at the sex differences between religions though.

And at least where the big ones are concerned, there isn’t much difference to see. Most people get their religion from their parents, so your Christianities, your Islams and your Hinduisms didn’t get where they are today without converting large numbers of both sexes.

Some of the smaller religions are very male- or female-dominated however, at least in the UK.

There’s a lot to unpack here. But the first thing I noticed was how comfortably women outnumber men in Buddhism and Christianity. (Despite what I said a few sentences ago.)

That’s interesting because it really isn’t what we see in the other big religions. Is there something about Christianity and Buddhism that disproportionately appeal to women in a way that Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism and Judaism don’t?

I’d guess there are two different stories here. The Christians of England and Wales, I suspect, identify less strongly with their religion, because the things that make you unusual play a larger part in your idea of who you are.

Indeed I think I’m right in saying that being Christian in the UK literally carries fewer bits of information than being Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Jewish—which is why it would be a less valuable fact in a game of Guess Who?

To me, that explains why cultural Christians would drop their religious identity more easily, thereby allowing men’s generally less religious tendency to show through in the way it does across all ages.

Buddhism is a different story. The number of people saying they are Buddhists lines up pretty closely all the way through life—except in middle age, where women have a large lead.

I don’t have such a neat idea of why that’s there, let alone something that lets me mention information theory. So my opening guess is that middle-aged women just like Buddhism. Let me know if you can improve on that.

On the fringes

People who answered with the minor categories probably identify with them quite strongly, because these weren’t options on the census form. You had to take the trouble to say you were something else and write it down.

As a result, I suspect this data might also underestimate the real numbers. It makes sense to guess that a lot of Atheists in particular may have been satisfied with “No Religion”, and not gone to the extra trouble of giving their non-belief a name. Those who did go to the extra trouble were much more likely to be men, of course.

I had to do a lot of Googling about the religions and the top and bottom of the chart, so I’m sure I’m going to get things wrong, but…

Heathenism or Heathenry is essentially a revival of the pre-Christian Viking and Anglo-Saxon beliefs, which means worshipping multiple gods you may have heard of, such as Odin, Thor and Freyja. I vaguely associate this with metal music, which is another thing I don’t know much about, but it does feel like quite male territory somehow.

In fact, I don’t want to insult anyone, but it’s tempting to suggest that Heathenry/Druidry and Witchcraft/Wicca are the male and female flavours of Paganism, which the internet informs me is an umbrella term for the modern forms of ancient European polytheism. Paganism as a whole is much more popular with women, and has followers of all ages.

The future for Spiritualism looks more worrying, with rapidly dwindling interest among women under 45.

By contrast, you’d say that Rastafarianism is a very small religion in the UK, and neither dying out nor catching on—perhaps in part because of the strong male skew among its followers.

I’ll be back soon with another blog. I’ve found some very fun facts about marriage. Subscribe here if you’d like to read it.