A Puzzle for Mormon Feminists

As discussed at BCC last month, "Seeking for Mormon Feminism." If, as some commentators allege, women are so disfavored in LDS doctrine and practice, why is there an LDS gender gap favoring women? And that gender gap is well established, as noted in a Mormon Mentality post summarizing the recent Pew Report.

Mormonism has among the most striking gender disparity of any faith tradition in America. 56% of Mormons are women, higher than any tradition other than Jehovah’s Witnesses and historically black Protestant churches.

Here's how Kaimi at BCC summarized the problem for feminists.

Women seem to consistently be the most active church members. This is perhaps the trickiest conceptual problem for the Mormon feminist: Explaining the appeal of this anti-feminist church to so many actual women. If the church is such a bad place for women — and conversely, such an unfairly good place for men — then why are women so much more likely to attend church?

The problem isn't with the data (which are what they are), it's with a misconceptualization of the research question. The real question is this: What is it about the LDS Church that is attracting women and chasing off men? Yes, that is the question that the data raises. A first step toward wrapping one's mind around this different statement of the gender problem might be to read the Armand Mauss essay "Feelings, Faith, and Folkways: A Personal Essay on Mormon Popular Culture," pages 23-38 in Proving Contraries (Signature, 2005). I posted some comments on the essay here.

Comments

[BrianJ]

Aren't there several permutations of that question that the data also raise? The way you phrase it, "What is it about the LDS Church that is attracting women and chasing off men?" could imply that male membership is declining overall, or (since a comparison to other churches is inherent in the data) that the LDS Church is less friendly toward males than other churches. The data could also ask, "Why is LDS attracting even more females than males?" or "Why are females just as attracted to LDS as to other churches, whereas males are less so?" Etc. I think we need more data before we know what question the data raise.

[Cynthia]

I would think that there might be two reasons:

1) The standards of personal behavior required for active membership are strict--and many men are unwilling to commit to them, whereas women seem more at ease with some of these moral restrictions.

2) The Church, if one is willing to delve deeply into doctrine, admits that God is a being of two genders (male and female)...and that women are active in the ordinances; for any woman who has been to the temple--this female empowerment is obvious. The power of women is most often hampered by local congregations and gospel doctrine teachers, I find. The gospel itself has no such diminution of women's power.

[Anon]

Women are more religious than men. Ziff at Zelophehad's Daughters did some number crunching recently and revealed that the LDS Church doesn't attract and retain as many women as do other religions.

[Christopher]

It's probably important to note, as Matt B did in the Mormon Mentality post you link to, that gender disparity tilted in favor of females is an issue that has existed in Christianity for quite some time now (certainly throughout the entire history of the United States).

As Matt notes, "That it persists in Mormonism can, perhaps, be ascribed to Mormonism’s continuing status as a somewhat counter-cultural, marginal sect - a status that the more unsurprising statistics demonstrate."