Gender differences in religiosity: a report on Russian data

ABSTRACT

Russia represents the largest Eastern Orthodox population in the World. Contrary to secularization trends in Western Europe, Russia has been undergoing a religious revival promoting traditional values. Extensive evidence indicates that in Christian nations women tend to be more religious than men. But what socio-economic factors explain the gender-religiosity gap in Russia? Using the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS-HSE), we compare gender-specific religiosities. Fixed-effects regressions show a U-shaped relation between respondents’ age and the probability of being religious with a minimum at the age of 15 for women, and 46 for men. Furthermore, we find that women are indeed more often religious than men and that the influence of religious parents or grandparents on women’s religiosity is higher. Women compared to men demonstrate increased religiosity in response to the death of a family member. However, better education and health status reduce women’s religiosity more than that of men. At the same time, men’s religiosity is more often influenced by that of their wives. In addition, men living in urban areas tend to be more religious than those in rural areas. This finding is Russia-specific and differs from the results found in other countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• religiosity
• RLMS-HSE
• fixed effects model
• random effects model

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Notes

1. Most of our literature review deals with the studies of the US and European data. If this is not the case, we emphasize this in the text.

Additional information

Funding

Russian Academic Excellence Project  „5-100 „. The funding section is not OK. It must be written as follows: Maksym Bryukhanov acknowledges support from the framework of the HSE University Basic Research Program funded by the Russian Academic Excellence Project  „5-100 „.

Notes on contributors

Maksym Bryukhanov

Maksym Bryukhanov was a junior research fellow at the Centre for Institutional Studies of the Higher School of Economics (Moscow). His current interdisciplinary research is devoted to the problems of well-being, philosophy, religion, institutional economics, and sustainable development.

Igor Fedotenkov

Igor Fedotenkov is a policy analyst at the DG Joint Research Centre (European Commission). His current research focuses on welfare state and productivity modelling from the micro- and macroeconomic perspectives. His interests also include sociology, gender equality, religion, and happiness studies.