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Religious Beliefs, Gender Consciousness, and Women’s Political Participation

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Abstract

Organized religion affords the faithful a variety of civic skills that encourage political participation. Women are more religious than are men by most measures, but religious women do not participate in politics at elevated rates. This discrepancy suggests a puzzle: religion may have a different effect on the political mobilization of men and women. In the present paper, we explore the effect of biblical literalism—a widespread belief that the Bible is the actual word of God, to be taken literally—on political participation. Using the 2012 American National Election Study, we find support for our two hypotheses: (a) biblical literalism is associated with lower levels of gender consciousness, as measured by perceptions of discrimination and strength of ties to women as a group, and (b) reductions in these two factors account for lower political participation among women. Our findings provide new insights into the ways religious and gender identities intersect to influence political mobilization among women, with interesting implications for an American political climate where gender and religion both represent fundamental identities that shape political behavior.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Tiffany Barnes, Angie Bos, Monica Schneider, Bas van Doorn, Matthew Jacobsmeier, and the Gender and Political Psychology Writing Group for their comments on this paper. Any errors that remain are our own.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, West Virginia University, 316 Woodburn Hall, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA

    Erin C. Cassese

  2. Department of Political Science, Tulane University, Norman Mayer 321, 6823 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, 70118, LA, USA

    Mirya R. Holman

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  1. Erin C. Cassese
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Correspondence to Erin C. Cassese.

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Disclosure of Potential Conflict of Interest

There are no funding sources to report for this research. We report secondary analysis of an existing dataset that was made publically available by the National Science Foundation. Data collection was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants SES-0937715 and SES-0937727, and also by the University of Michigan and Stanford University. The ANES Principal Investigators are Vincent Hutchings (University of Michigan) and Gary Segura and Simon Jackman (Stanford University). Ted Brader (University of Michigan) is Associate Principal Investigator. The authors report no relationship to the PIs or supporting universities.

Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals

The research involved human subjects. Research subjects gave informed consent, data is kept secure and confidential, and all identifying information is redacted from the publically-available version of the dataset used by the authors in this research.

Informed Consent

Online administration of the survey was completed by GfK Knowledge Networks. Face-to-face survey administration was performed by Abt SRBI. In both cases, informed consent procedures were followed. Further information is available at: The American National Election Studies (ANES; www.electionstudies.org). The ANES 2012 Time Series Study [dataset]. Stanford University and the University of Michigan [producers]. http://www.electionstudies.org/studypages/anes_timeseries_2012/anes_timeseries_2012_userguidecodebook.pdf

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Cassese, E.C., Holman, M.R. Religious Beliefs, Gender Consciousness, and Women’s Political Participation. Sex Roles 75, 514–527 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0635-9

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