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Intra-group variation in conservative Christians’ gender ideologies (1972–2006)
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The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 225–236
Intra-group variation in conservative Christians’ gender ideologies (1972–2006) Margaret Gonsoulin ∗ , Anjeanette LeBoeuf Department of Sociology, California State University, Fresno, 5340 North Campus Drive, M/S SS97 Fresno, CA 93740-8019, USA
Abstract This paper illuminates significant intra-group variations in the gender ideologies of conservative Christians in the United States. Between the 1970s and the present, both conservative Christian men and women have become increasingly accepting of women’s roles in politics and women’s participation in the workforce. Religiously conservative women have become more opposed to sexual freedoms and abortion rights. Religiously conservative men have become less opposed over time to sexual freedoms and have not changed with regard to abortion ideology. In general, for both men and women, conservative Christians who are older, attend church services more often and have less education tend to be more conservative in their gender ideologies. For females only, higher incomes lead to less conservative gender ideologies, and living in the southern region of the United States tends to decrease their support for female politicians. Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of Western Social Science Association.
1. Introduction Many previous studies have examined various aspects of gender roles attitudes in conservative Christian religious communities. Nevertheless, this study offers several new pieces of information. The main goal of past research was to compare conservative Christians to other religious groups rather than to examine within-group variation, and the majority of past studies do not examine changes over time. Further, all past studies looking at changes in conservative Christians’ gender ideologies over time analyze male and female respondents simultaneously. ∗
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 559 278 7731. E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Gonsoulin).
0362-3319/$ – see front matter Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of Western Social Science Association. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2009.09.001
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Hoffman and Miller’s (1997) article overlaps the most with this study, but their article differs in that it uses single indicators to measure each gender ideology, has data that extends only to 1994, analyzes women and men simultaneously and expends significant effort comparing conservatives to other religious groups. This paper more closely scrutinizes the gender ideologies of conservative Christians by using multiple indicators to measure each concept and extends it by using additional years of data up to the year 2006; data begins in 1972 because that is when the General Social Survey database begins. All current analyses will be separated by sex. Within-group variation will be the focus, and change over time will be explored in detail. Since the Second Great Awakening, conservative Christian leaders have characterized the role of mother and wife as a sacred one, but the political component of “pro-family” movement did not begin in earnest until the 1940s when the conservative Christian community began to abandon their isolationist stance (Boylan, 1978; Hardacre, 1993; Wuthnow, 1988). Since the 1940s, many issues have accumulated to compose the list of “pro-family” causes. The “pro-family” platform now includes opposition to: abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, extramarital sex, contraception and an Equal Rights Amendment. This campaign aims to promote the ideals of sacred heterosexual unions, the sanctity of life and sacred gender roles (Bendroth, 1999; Gay, Ellison, & Powers, 1996; Glass & Nath, 2006). Whether or not these nationally defined platforms are consistent with the ideals of their grassroots constituency remains somewhat unclear. Furthermore, it is unclear how these conservative Christian attitudes are changing as we move into the twenty-first century. In general, past studies have shown that conservative Christians are more conservative with regard to gender roles than most other religious groups. These general trends are just that, too general. Thus, scholars have pulled apart the various components of gender ideals and examined them more closely. When it comes to freedoms related to sexuality and sexual expression, findings are mixed. McConkey (2001) and Hoffman and Miller (1997) found that conservative Christians’ attitudes about homosexuality, birth control and non-marital sex softened between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, but Scott (1998) finds a shift only with regard to non-marital sex but not homosexuality. In the 1980s and 1990s, as abortion was being redefined as a “moral issue,” conservative Christian communities became increasingly opposed to abortion rights (Hoffman & Johnson, 2005; Hoffman & Miller, 1997; Luker, 1984; McConkey, 2001). While conservative Christians are more likely to accept abortion when it is sought for traumatic reasons such as rape, they are still the most opposed of the various religious groups. This is likely due to the fact that abortion has become the unifying issue around which conservative Christians have rallied (Hoffman & Johnson, 2005). When asked about motherhood versus work roles for women, conservative Christian people do tend to expect women to be chaste and submissive homemakers (Glass & Nath, 2006; Hardacre, 1993; Kintz, 1994; Lehrer, 2000). Despite the continued adherence to the ideals of male headship and female submission, the understandings of these concepts do seem to be changing. In practice, according to self-reports from religiously conservative women, submission is redefined as a sacrifice that women make only when differences are “truly irreconcilable”1 (Rose, 1987; Pevey, Williams, & Ellison, 1996). Furthermore, argu-
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ments for greater gender equality in the Christian community and home are beginning to be expressed publicly by religiously conservative women themselves (Stocks, 1997; Gallagher, 2004). It is important to understand these ideologies because each of the “pro-family” agenda items could have a potentially negative impact on women’s advancement opportunities and overall status attainment. In general, there has been a tendency for conservative Christians to distrust public (or secular) education systems because they fear it will lead to loss of faith on the part of their children as can be witnessed in their greater tendency to opt for homeschooling. This fear of the secularizing forces of education tends to have a more negative effect on the educational achievement of female children than on male children; when female children who grew up in conservative homes do not share the conservative beliefs of their parents, their parents are less supportive of their continued education (Sherkat & Darnell, 1999). This fear of the public educational system has also likely contributed to the observed education gap between conservative Christians and other religious groups, but that educational gap did reduce between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s (Ellison & Bartkowski, 2002; McConkey, 2001; Park & Reimer, 2002). Perhaps this reduction in the education gap may be due in part to the proliferation of conservative Christian colleges (e.g., Liberty University) around the nation. In fact, the fear of education as a “secularizing” force may be unfounded because Hoffman and Miller (1997) find that as education increases for conservative Christians, their levels of conservatism actually increase rather than decrease on average. Perhaps this relationship between education and level of conservatism is due, in part, to participation in Christian campus organizations where conservative ideologies are consistently reinforced (Bryant, 2006). Another important measure of status attainment is work force participation. Despite consistently having the highest levels of opposition to public roles for women, conservative Christians have become increasingly accepting of female labor force participation between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s (Hoffman & Miller, 1997; McConkey, 2001). However, this increased acceptance of women’s workforce participation has not decreased the housework expectations for conservative Christian women; they continue to do an average of 4.1 more hours of housework than other women (Ellison & Bartkowski, 2002). Neither religious ideology nor marital status directly affects women’s decisions about whether or not to work. Instead, these decisions are a function of gender role ideology and presence of young children, both of which are related to conservative Christianity (Ammons & Edgell, 2007; Glass & Nath, 2006; Hall, 1995). Thus, it is important to understand gender ideology. When conservative women do work, they tend to downplay the importance of that work by saying that it is secondary to their roles as mothers and wives (Brasher, 1998; Gallagher & Smith, 1999; Pevey, Williams, & Ellison, 1996). While all men are equally likely to work, conservative Christian men are more likely to refuse offers for overtime than mainstream Christian men (Glass & Nath, 2006). The goal of this study is to look for the factors that predict intra-group variation in a wide range of gender ideologies over time among conservative Christians. Two general hypotheses will be tested in this paper: (1) conservative Christians’ gender ideologies have changed over time and (2) the gender ideologies of male and female conservative Christians will differ.
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2. Methods Data was collected from the General Social Survey (GSS) 1972–2006; this database has long been a popular choice for studies of this nature because of its many measures of religiosity and gender ideologies and because of its longevity. The GSS is a national survey of United States residents who are English speaking, aged eighteen or older and not institutionalized. Only respondents who are currently members of conservative Christian churches are included in this study, and all analyses are separated by sex. Dependent Variables—Gender ideology is the dependent variable of interest. Four aspects of gender ideals are measured in this study: abortion attitude, attitude toward sexual freedoms, degree of emphasis put on work versus motherhood for women and opinion of female political leadership. Opinion of female politicians is the only dependent variable that is not an index; it is measured by a single variable that asks respondents if they agree or disagree with this statement: “men are better suited emotionally for politics than are most women.” The percentage who “oppose female politicians” are presented in the tables displayed in Section 3. Indexes are created for abortion attitude, attitude toward sexual freedoms and degree of emphasis put on motherhood via the following process. First, each of the indicators included in an index was checked for its level of correlation using crosstabs, chi-square and the appropriate measure of association. Crosstabulation is used rather than factor analysis because all indicators are either nominal or ordinal level measures. Next, recoding was performed to make sure that the direction of measurement of the various indicators all exhibited the appropriate meaning (e.g., higher numbers all indicate greater degrees of opposition to abortion). Then, additional recoding was performed to make sure that each indicator had the same number of categories; this ensures that each component of the index is given equal weight. Finally, the indicators were simply added together to create each index. For use in crosstabular analyses, the three indexes were recoded into three-category variables to reflect conservative, moderate, and liberal stances. Then, for use in the logistic regressions, the indexes were transformed into dichotomous variables. Abortion attitude is measured by indexing the five questionnaire items that read, “Please tell me whether or not you think it should be possible for a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if. . . (1) the woman wants one for any reason, (2) the woman’s health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy, (3) she is married and does not want any more children, (4) the family has a very low income and cannot afford more children and (5) she became pregnant as a result of rape.” The resulting index ranges from five, pro-choice in all circumstances, to ten, pro-life in all circumstances. For abortion attitudes to be used in analyses, the original scale was recoded into five and six for “extremely pro-choice”, seven and eight for “moderate” and nine through ten for “extremely pro-life.” Only the “extremely pro-life” percentages are represented in the tables; those respondents coded as “extremely pro-life” oppose abortion rights in at least four out of five of the situations asked about in the questions. In the logistic regressions, the “extremely pro-life” group is coded as one, and all others are coded as zero. “Opposition toward sexual freedoms” is measured by combining three variables into an index. The first two questionnaire items asked respondents if they believe “sexual relations between two adults of the same sex” and “sex between a man and woman before marriage” is
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either always wrong, almost always wrong, wrong only sometimes or not wrong at all. “Would you be for or against sex education in public schools?” is the third measure. The resulting index ranges from three, accepting of sexual freedoms, to six, opposed to sexual freedoms. The index measuring “attitude toward sexual freedoms” was recoded for use in analyses in the following way. Responses with a score of three on the scale are coded as accepting of sexual freedom, and those with a score of four are coded as moderate. Respondents with a score of five through six are coded as “opposed to sexual freedoms;” results shown in the tables below represent the percentage of respondents who are opposed to sexual freedoms. And, for the logistic regression analyses, those who are “opposed to sexual freedoms” are coded as one. The third dependent variable measures the emphasis that respondents put on women’s work roles versus women’s roles as mothers. This composite measure consists of three variables all measured on a four-point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The three statements posed to respondents are (1) a working woman can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work, (2) a preschool child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works and (3) it is much better for everyone if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family. The resulting “mother first” index ranges from three, meaning work roles are acceptable for women, to twelve, meaning motherhood should come first for women. This index for measuring emphasis on motherhood in women’s lives was recoded as “work life emphasized” for a score of three through five and “balance of work and motherhood” for scores between six and eight. The group scoring between nine and twelve on the index was recoded as putting “motherhood first.” The percentages for “motherhood first” are displayed in the tables displaying crosstabular results, and “motherhood first” is coded as one in the logistic regression analyses. Independent Variables—The primary independent variable used in these analyses is year. In the crosstabular analyses, year is transformed into decade, and in the logistic regression analyses, year is transformed into sequential numbering beginning with one for 1972 and ending with twenty-six for 2006. Control Variables—Sex is the main control variable in this study; all analyses are performed separately for conservative Christian women and men. In the logistic regression analyses, age, education level, income (logged and standardized in 1986 dollars), rate of church attendance and southern residency are also used as control variables.
3. Results Table 1 displays the first set of crosstabular analyses (using Chi-square and gamma; for the sake of brevity, these statistics are only reported in the table) of gender ideologies by decade, controlling for sex, and then gender ideologies by sex, controlling for decade. First, the effect of decade will be examined. Every gender ideology has changed over time among conservative Christian men and women except the abortion ideology of men. Religiously conservative women have become increasingly “pro-life” over the last four decades. Opposition toward sexual freedoms seems to have decreased during the 1980s and 1990s but increased again in more recent times for women. The pattern of attitudes toward sexual freedoms is much less
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1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
χ2 (difference by decade)
Γ (difference by decade)
N
Percent who are pro-life
Men Women χ2 (difference by sex) Γ (difference by sex)
26.1% 23.3% 2.5 −.024
23.6% 27.5% 7.7* .043
21.4% 28.4% 14.7** .106
26.9% 34.8% 10.4** .102
8.9 29.6***
−.004 .057
3255 4766
Percent opposed to sex-freedoms
Men Women χ2 (difference by sex) Γ (difference by sex)
53.4% 63.6% 10.0** .165
50.5% 56.2% 11.1** .072
52.4% 55.6% 9.9** .014
51.6% 61.8% 20.4*** .113
19.7** 54.1***
−.024 −.051
1650 2470
Percent say “mother first”
Men Women χ2 (difference by sex) Γ (difference by sex)
59.2% 46.0% 9.19** −.261
38.3% 27.7% 41.6*** −.269
32.8% 24.9% 98.1*** −.287
35.9% 23.2% 67.4*** −.343
46.1*** 68.4***
−.101 −.127
2479 3838
Percent opposed to female politicians
Men Women χ2 (difference by sex) Γ (difference by sex)
60.1% 56.1% 2.3 .082
43.7% 43.2% .063 .011
29.5% 30.6% .363 −.027
29.5% 25.7% 2.75 .097
177.2*** 233.5***
.339 .332
3089 4761
∗
Significant at the .05 level. Significant at the .01 level. ∗∗∗ Significant at the .001 level. ∗∗
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Table 1 Ideology by decade and sex, conservative Christians only.
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Table 2 Logistic regressions, conservative Christian men only.
Age Education Income (logged) South Church attendance Year Number of cases ∗∗ ∗∗∗
Opposed to abortion rights
Opposed to sexual freedom
Favor mother role first
Opposed to female politicians
−.007 (.004) −.078*** (.020) −.067 (.058) −.170 (.117) .258*** (.022) .008 (.007) 2170
.020*** (.005) −.092*** (.027) −.064 (.081) −.011 (.147) .366*** (.029) .007 (.008) 1090
.031*** (.005) −.074*** (.021) .052 (.065) .066 (.121) .158*** (.022) −.024** (.008) 1581
.014*** (.004) −.103*** (.018) .050 (.056) .053 (.105) .102*** (.019) −.046*** (.006) 1973
Significant at the .01 level. Significant at the .001 level.
clear for religiously conservative men. Both conservative Christian men and women have put increasingly less emphasis on women’s roles as mother from the 1970s to the present. Again, both male and female conservative Christians have become significantly less opposed to the notion of women politicians. Now, turning attention to sex-based differences in each decade (also seen in Table 1), outcomes depend on the particular ideology of interest. Sex-based differences in abortion attitudes first appear in the 1980s and continue to strengthen as time goes by; conservative Christian women are increasingly more pro-life than their male counterparts. In every decade, there is a significant sex-based difference in terms of opposition toward sexual freedoms. Religiously conservative women are more opposed to sexual freedoms than religiously conservative men, but the size of the gap remains fairly consistent. With regard to the importance of motherhood in women’s lives, there is a sex-based difference in every decade as well. Conservative Christian men are consistently more likely than conservative Christian women to emphasize “motherhood over work.” Lastly, there is no sex-based difference in the level at which religiously conservative men and women are likely to support a female role in politics in any of the decades under study. Table 2 displays the results of four logistic regressions performed on information gathered from male conservative Christians. Looking at the first column where abortion ideology is the dependent variable, as education decreases and church attendance increases, conservative Christian men are more likely to oppose abortion rights; there has been no significant change over time. The second column shows that the older, less educated and more frequent church attendees are more opposed to sexual freedoms; there has been no significant change over time with regard to opinions of sexual freedoms. When it comes to women’s roles as mothers, male conservative Christians who are older, less educated and attend church services more frequently are more likely to believe that motherhood should come first in women’s lives, but there has been a significant decrease in this attitude over time among religiously conservative men. Lastly, conservative Christian men who are older, less educated and attend church more often are more opposed to female politicians, but this opposition has been reducing over time as well. Table 3 displays the results of four logistic regressions performed on the responses of female conservative Christians. Looking first at abortion attitudes, religiously conservative women
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Table 3 Logistic regressions, conservative Christian women only.
Age Education Income (logged) South Church attendance Year Number of cases
Opposed to abortion rights
Opposed to sexual freedom
Favor mother role first
Opposed to female politicians
.000 (.004) −.092*** (.022) −.163*** (.050) .019 (.110) .315*** (.023) .038*** (.006) 2346
.034*** (.006) −.059* (.029) −.145* (.072) .136 (.154) .419*** (.030) −.003 (.008) 1156
.030*** (.005) −.083** (.028) −.179** (.060) −.107 (.140) .134*** (.027) −.033*** (.009) 1858
.019*** (.004) −.093*** (.021) −.032 (.048) .466*** (.103) .115*** (.020) −.052*** (.006) 2223
∗
Significant at the .05 level. Significant at the .01 level. ∗∗∗ Significant at the .001 level. ∗∗
with less education, less income and higher church attendance are more opposed to abortion rights, and as a group, they are becoming more opposed to abortion rights over time. Conservative Christian women who are older, have less education, earn lower incomes and attend church more frequently are more opposed to sexual freedoms; there has been no significant change over time. The older, less educated, lower earning conservative Christian women who attend church regularly are most likely to believe that motherhood should come first in women’s lives, but this emphasis is becoming less pronounced as time passes. Lastly, religiously conservative women are more likely to be opposed to female political leadership when they are older, less educated, live in the southern United States and attend church frequently, but as a group, they are becoming less opposed to female politicians over time.
4. Discussion These data provide a more in-depth look into the conservative Christian community in the United States. These analyses include a general look at the ideologies of religiously conservative men and women separately from 1972 through the 2006. To understand the difference gender made, men and women are not only directly compared in each decade, but their patterns of change over time are also taken into consideration. The stereotypes of conservative Christians might lead one to believe that they are all equally conservative when it comes to women’s roles in the family and society and the amount of freedom that women should have. However, there has been significant change in their gender ideologies over time as well as significant differences between their male and female members. There was a clear progression toward greater acceptance of prominent roles for women in the political realm and the workplace among all conservative Christians. With regard to opposition to female politicians, there was no significant difference between male and female conservative Christians; they were all equally accepting in each decade under study. Evidence of this can be seen in the most recent presidential election when conservative Christians enthusiastically rallied support for the female Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. However, in every decade under study, religiously conservative men were more likely than religiously
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conservative women to put motherhood ahead of labor force participation for women; therefore, it seems that conservative men still expect working women to “actively and intensively mother” despite the long hours. As we know from the work of many gender scholars, the “Second Shift” is a burden that prevents many American women from fully reaching economic equality, and Ellison and Bartkowski (2002) confirm that conservative Christian women do even more hours on the “second shift” than mainline Christian women. When it comes to abortion ideology, the gender-based patterns changed significantly. Conservative Christian women have become increasingly opposed to this right. Conservative Christian men did not significantly change over time in terms of their beliefs about abortion. In general, men were significantly less likely to be extremely “pro-life” than women. Conservative women exhibited steady increase in their propensity to be extremely “pro-life” across the four decades. Perhaps this tendency among conservative Christian women represents a macro-level attempt to reestablish “balance” in the religious community. It is possible that religiously conservative women are attempting to placate fears about their increasing workforce participation and greater economic contributions to their families by actively opposing their own rights to abortion thereby working to reduce their own sexual freedoms. Sexual freedoms represent another issue where conservative Christian women have become increasingly conservative over time, whereas conservative Christian men have become less conservative over time. This study confirms the findings of Hoffman and Miller (1997) and McConkey (2001) that religiously conservative people started becoming more accepting of sexual freedoms in the 1980s and 1990s but these data also show that conservative Christian women (but not men) had a complete turn-around by the 2000s. In addition, in each decade under study, women were significantly more opposed to sexual freedoms than men. In general, conservative Christian men have grown more tolerant of women’s rights than conservative Christian women over the last four decades. However, religiously conservative men are still more likely to believe that women should put a great deal of emphasis on their domestic roles but express a new acceptance of female politicians and increased openness to abortion rights and sexual freedoms. Religiously conservative women are just the opposite; they de-emphasize motherhood in favor of work roles but are becoming increasingly opposed to their own sexual freedoms. It is impossible to compare these results to past studies since none separate their analyses by sex. When controls are entered into a logistic regression model, we learn that, for both male and female conservative Christians, age, education and church attendance are significant predictors of gender ideologies. When predicting levels of opposition to sexual freedoms and female politicians and the primacy of motherhood in women’s lives, the older the conservative Christian person is the more conservative their position; age does not make a significant difference on abortion ideologies. The more educated a conservative Christian person is the more liberal their position is with regard to all of the ideologies under study; this is opposite of Bryant (2006) findings. And, the more a conservative Christian person attends church services, the more conservative their positions are on all of these gender ideologies. The analyses of conservative Christian women displayed some trends that were unique to women. When it comes to opposition to abortion, opposition to sexual freedoms and emphasis on motherhood, conservative Christian women with higher incomes are more liberal in their
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views; income has no significant impact on the views of conservative Christian men. With regard to support for female politicians, conservative Christian women who live in the south have more conservative views than conservative Christian women who live elsewhere. Place of residence has no effect on men’s gender ideologies. When it comes to change over time, conservative Christian men and women have both become more accepting of female politicians, and both have put significantly less emphasis on motherhood in women’s lives. As discussed above, it was shown that religiously conservative women have become more accepting of female labor force participation than their male counterparts and that increased incomes for women have a liberalizing effect on their gender ideologies; therefore, these two trends will likely have a compound effect on religiously conservative women’s gender ideologies. Neither men nor women significantly changed over time with regard to sexual freedoms once controls are entered into the model. Past findings noted a decreasing opposition to sexual freedoms in the 1980s and 1990s, but this study shows that conservative Christians have reverted back to their 1970s levels of opposition again. Past studies have noted that conservative Christians are becoming increasingly opposed to abortion rights over time, but this study shows that it is only the religiously conservative women who are responsible for this trend. Now we know that there are significant differences between conservative Christian men and conservative Christian women. So, we are left with the questions of why are female conservatives more opposed to abortion, and why are male conservatives more likely to support traditional roles for women? Perhaps the differences in the gender ideologies of male and female conservative Christians are due, in part, to the lower income earned by females and the higher rates of church attendance on the part of females. Conservative Christian women (like all women in the United States) have earned significantly less than their male counterparts in every decade under study.2 In addition, conservative Christian women attend church services more often than conservative Christian men in every decade under study.3 Greater church attendance and lower incomes are both associated with higher levels of conservatism for women. This issue deserves further study.
Notes 1. According to these women, “truly irreconcilable” differences are defined as situations where the husband and wife have discussed the matter extensively but cannot come to an agreement; the women report that this is different, in their minds, from straight-forward submission. Many conservative Christian wives feel that their marriages are partnerships. 2. Income is presented as median incomes in 1986 dollars; t-tests were performed on logged income values. In the 1970s, male conservative Christians ($20,011) earned significantly more than female conservative Christians ($8667) (t = 15.3, p < .001). In the 1980s, male conservative Christians ($18,094) earned significantly more than female conservative Christians ($10,850) (t = 15.3, p < .001). In the 1990s, male conservative Christians ($18,947) earned significantly more than female conservative Christians ($11,196) (t = 16.1, p < .001). In the 2000s, male conservative Christians ($20,651) earned significantly more than female conservative Christians ($12,508) (t = 11.1, p < .001).
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3. In terms of church attendance in the 1970s, 30% of male conservative Christians and 40.4% of female conservative Christians attended services once a week or more (X2 = 57.7, p < .001, Γ = .159). In the 1980s, 31.8% of male conservative Christians and 41% of female conservative Christians attended services once a week or more (X2 = 88.8, p < .001, Γ = .168). In the 1990s, 31.3% of male conservative Christians and 39.9% of female conservative Christians attended services once a week or more (X2 = 52.2, p < .001, Γ = .143). In the 2000s, 31.7% of male and 41.9% of female conservative Christians attended services once a week or more (X2 = 69.3, p < .001, Γ = .166).
Acknowledgements I thank Rae Lesser Blumberg, Casandra Kesler, the anonymous Social Science Journal reviewers and the Editor for all of the feedback related to this article.
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Lehrer, E. L. (2000). Religion as a determinant of entry into cohabitation and marriage. In L. J. Waite, L. J. Waite, et al. (Eds.), The ties that bind: perspectives on marriage and cohabitation (pp. 227–252). New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Luker, Kristen. (1984). Abortion and the politics of motherhood. Berkeley: University of California Press. McConkey, D. (2001). Whither hunter’s culture war? shifts in evangelical morality, 1988–1998. Sociology of Religion, 62(2), 149–174. Park, J., & Reimer, S. H. (2002). Revisiting the social sources of American Christianity. Journal for Scientific Study of Religion, 41(4), 733–746. Pevey, C., Williams, C. L., & Ellison, C. G. (1996). Male god imagery and female submission: Lessons from a southern baptist ladies Bible study class. Qualitative Sociology, 19(2), 173–193. Rose, S. D. (1987). Women warriors: The negotiation of gender in a charismatic community. Sociological Analysis, 46(3), 245–258. Scott, J. (1998). Changing attitudes to sexual morality: A cross-national comparison. Sociology Journal, 32(4), 815–845. Sherkat, D. E., & Darnell, A. (1999). The effects of parents’ fundamentalism on children’s education. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 38(1), 23–35. Stocks, J. (1997). Voices from the margins: evangelical feminist negotiation in the public debate of a small denomination in the United States. In J. Brink, & Mencher (Eds.), Mixed blessings: gender and religious fundamentalism cross culturally (pp. 59–72). New York: Routledge Publishers. Wuthnow, R. (1988). The restructuring of American religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Intra-group variation in conservative Christians’ gender ideologies (1972–2006) Margaret Gonsoulin ∗ , Anjeanette LeBoeuf Department of Sociology, California State University, Fresno, 5340 North Campus Drive, M/S SS97 Fresno, CA 93740-8019, USA
Abstract This paper illuminates significant intra-group variations in the gender ideologies of conservative Christians in the United States. Between the 1970s and the present, both conservative Christian men and women have become increasingly accepting of women’s roles in politics and women’s participation in the workforce. Religiously conservative women have become more opposed to sexual freedoms and abortion rights. Religiously conservative men have become less opposed over time to sexual freedoms and have not changed with regard to abortion ideology. In general, for both men and women, conservative Christians who are older, attend church services more often and have less education tend to be more conservative in their gender ideologies. For females only, higher incomes lead to less conservative gender ideologies, and living in the southern region of the United States tends to decrease their support for female politicians. Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of Western Social Science Association.
1. Introduction Many previous studies have examined various aspects of gender roles attitudes in conservative Christian religious communities. Nevertheless, this study offers several new pieces of information. The main goal of past research was to compare conservative Christians to other religious groups rather than to examine within-group variation, and the majority of past studies do not examine changes over time. Further, all past studies looking at changes in conservative Christians’ gender ideologies over time analyze male and female respondents simultaneously. ∗
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 559 278 7731. E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Gonsoulin).
0362-3319/$ – see front matter Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of Western Social Science Association. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2009.09.001
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Hoffman and Miller’s (1997) article overlaps the most with this study, but their article differs in that it uses single indicators to measure each gender ideology, has data that extends only to 1994, analyzes women and men simultaneously and expends significant effort comparing conservatives to other religious groups. This paper more closely scrutinizes the gender ideologies of conservative Christians by using multiple indicators to measure each concept and extends it by using additional years of data up to the year 2006; data begins in 1972 because that is when the General Social Survey database begins. All current analyses will be separated by sex. Within-group variation will be the focus, and change over time will be explored in detail. Since the Second Great Awakening, conservative Christian leaders have characterized the role of mother and wife as a sacred one, but the political component of “pro-family” movement did not begin in earnest until the 1940s when the conservative Christian community began to abandon their isolationist stance (Boylan, 1978; Hardacre, 1993; Wuthnow, 1988). Since the 1940s, many issues have accumulated to compose the list of “pro-family” causes. The “pro-family” platform now includes opposition to: abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, extramarital sex, contraception and an Equal Rights Amendment. This campaign aims to promote the ideals of sacred heterosexual unions, the sanctity of life and sacred gender roles (Bendroth, 1999; Gay, Ellison, & Powers, 1996; Glass & Nath, 2006). Whether or not these nationally defined platforms are consistent with the ideals of their grassroots constituency remains somewhat unclear. Furthermore, it is unclear how these conservative Christian attitudes are changing as we move into the twenty-first century. In general, past studies have shown that conservative Christians are more conservative with regard to gender roles than most other religious groups. These general trends are just that, too general. Thus, scholars have pulled apart the various components of gender ideals and examined them more closely. When it comes to freedoms related to sexuality and sexual expression, findings are mixed. McConkey (2001) and Hoffman and Miller (1997) found that conservative Christians’ attitudes about homosexuality, birth control and non-marital sex softened between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, but Scott (1998) finds a shift only with regard to non-marital sex but not homosexuality. In the 1980s and 1990s, as abortion was being redefined as a “moral issue,” conservative Christian communities became increasingly opposed to abortion rights (Hoffman & Johnson, 2005; Hoffman & Miller, 1997; Luker, 1984; McConkey, 2001). While conservative Christians are more likely to accept abortion when it is sought for traumatic reasons such as rape, they are still the most opposed of the various religious groups. This is likely due to the fact that abortion has become the unifying issue around which conservative Christians have rallied (Hoffman & Johnson, 2005). When asked about motherhood versus work roles for women, conservative Christian people do tend to expect women to be chaste and submissive homemakers (Glass & Nath, 2006; Hardacre, 1993; Kintz, 1994; Lehrer, 2000). Despite the continued adherence to the ideals of male headship and female submission, the understandings of these concepts do seem to be changing. In practice, according to self-reports from religiously conservative women, submission is redefined as a sacrifice that women make only when differences are “truly irreconcilable”1 (Rose, 1987; Pevey, Williams, & Ellison, 1996). Furthermore, argu-
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ments for greater gender equality in the Christian community and home are beginning to be expressed publicly by religiously conservative women themselves (Stocks, 1997; Gallagher, 2004). It is important to understand these ideologies because each of the “pro-family” agenda items could have a potentially negative impact on women’s advancement opportunities and overall status attainment. In general, there has been a tendency for conservative Christians to distrust public (or secular) education systems because they fear it will lead to loss of faith on the part of their children as can be witnessed in their greater tendency to opt for homeschooling. This fear of the secularizing forces of education tends to have a more negative effect on the educational achievement of female children than on male children; when female children who grew up in conservative homes do not share the conservative beliefs of their parents, their parents are less supportive of their continued education (Sherkat & Darnell, 1999). This fear of the public educational system has also likely contributed to the observed education gap between conservative Christians and other religious groups, but that educational gap did reduce between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s (Ellison & Bartkowski, 2002; McConkey, 2001; Park & Reimer, 2002). Perhaps this reduction in the education gap may be due in part to the proliferation of conservative Christian colleges (e.g., Liberty University) around the nation. In fact, the fear of education as a “secularizing” force may be unfounded because Hoffman and Miller (1997) find that as education increases for conservative Christians, their levels of conservatism actually increase rather than decrease on average. Perhaps this relationship between education and level of conservatism is due, in part, to participation in Christian campus organizations where conservative ideologies are consistently reinforced (Bryant, 2006). Another important measure of status attainment is work force participation. Despite consistently having the highest levels of opposition to public roles for women, conservative Christians have become increasingly accepting of female labor force participation between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s (Hoffman & Miller, 1997; McConkey, 2001). However, this increased acceptance of women’s workforce participation has not decreased the housework expectations for conservative Christian women; they continue to do an average of 4.1 more hours of housework than other women (Ellison & Bartkowski, 2002). Neither religious ideology nor marital status directly affects women’s decisions about whether or not to work. Instead, these decisions are a function of gender role ideology and presence of young children, both of which are related to conservative Christianity (Ammons & Edgell, 2007; Glass & Nath, 2006; Hall, 1995). Thus, it is important to understand gender ideology. When conservative women do work, they tend to downplay the importance of that work by saying that it is secondary to their roles as mothers and wives (Brasher, 1998; Gallagher & Smith, 1999; Pevey, Williams, & Ellison, 1996). While all men are equally likely to work, conservative Christian men are more likely to refuse offers for overtime than mainstream Christian men (Glass & Nath, 2006). The goal of this study is to look for the factors that predict intra-group variation in a wide range of gender ideologies over time among conservative Christians. Two general hypotheses will be tested in this paper: (1) conservative Christians’ gender ideologies have changed over time and (2) the gender ideologies of male and female conservative Christians will differ.
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2. Methods Data was collected from the General Social Survey (GSS) 1972–2006; this database has long been a popular choice for studies of this nature because of its many measures of religiosity and gender ideologies and because of its longevity. The GSS is a national survey of United States residents who are English speaking, aged eighteen or older and not institutionalized. Only respondents who are currently members of conservative Christian churches are included in this study, and all analyses are separated by sex. Dependent Variables—Gender ideology is the dependent variable of interest. Four aspects of gender ideals are measured in this study: abortion attitude, attitude toward sexual freedoms, degree of emphasis put on work versus motherhood for women and opinion of female political leadership. Opinion of female politicians is the only dependent variable that is not an index; it is measured by a single variable that asks respondents if they agree or disagree with this statement: “men are better suited emotionally for politics than are most women.” The percentage who “oppose female politicians” are presented in the tables displayed in Section 3. Indexes are created for abortion attitude, attitude toward sexual freedoms and degree of emphasis put on motherhood via the following process. First, each of the indicators included in an index was checked for its level of correlation using crosstabs, chi-square and the appropriate measure of association. Crosstabulation is used rather than factor analysis because all indicators are either nominal or ordinal level measures. Next, recoding was performed to make sure that the direction of measurement of the various indicators all exhibited the appropriate meaning (e.g., higher numbers all indicate greater degrees of opposition to abortion). Then, additional recoding was performed to make sure that each indicator had the same number of categories; this ensures that each component of the index is given equal weight. Finally, the indicators were simply added together to create each index. For use in crosstabular analyses, the three indexes were recoded into three-category variables to reflect conservative, moderate, and liberal stances. Then, for use in the logistic regressions, the indexes were transformed into dichotomous variables. Abortion attitude is measured by indexing the five questionnaire items that read, “Please tell me whether or not you think it should be possible for a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if. . . (1) the woman wants one for any reason, (2) the woman’s health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy, (3) she is married and does not want any more children, (4) the family has a very low income and cannot afford more children and (5) she became pregnant as a result of rape.” The resulting index ranges from five, pro-choice in all circumstances, to ten, pro-life in all circumstances. For abortion attitudes to be used in analyses, the original scale was recoded into five and six for “extremely pro-choice”, seven and eight for “moderate” and nine through ten for “extremely pro-life.” Only the “extremely pro-life” percentages are represented in the tables; those respondents coded as “extremely pro-life” oppose abortion rights in at least four out of five of the situations asked about in the questions. In the logistic regressions, the “extremely pro-life” group is coded as one, and all others are coded as zero. “Opposition toward sexual freedoms” is measured by combining three variables into an index. The first two questionnaire items asked respondents if they believe “sexual relations between two adults of the same sex” and “sex between a man and woman before marriage” is
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either always wrong, almost always wrong, wrong only sometimes or not wrong at all. “Would you be for or against sex education in public schools?” is the third measure. The resulting index ranges from three, accepting of sexual freedoms, to six, opposed to sexual freedoms. The index measuring “attitude toward sexual freedoms” was recoded for use in analyses in the following way. Responses with a score of three on the scale are coded as accepting of sexual freedom, and those with a score of four are coded as moderate. Respondents with a score of five through six are coded as “opposed to sexual freedoms;” results shown in the tables below represent the percentage of respondents who are opposed to sexual freedoms. And, for the logistic regression analyses, those who are “opposed to sexual freedoms” are coded as one. The third dependent variable measures the emphasis that respondents put on women’s work roles versus women’s roles as mothers. This composite measure consists of three variables all measured on a four-point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The three statements posed to respondents are (1) a working woman can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work, (2) a preschool child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works and (3) it is much better for everyone if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family. The resulting “mother first” index ranges from three, meaning work roles are acceptable for women, to twelve, meaning motherhood should come first for women. This index for measuring emphasis on motherhood in women’s lives was recoded as “work life emphasized” for a score of three through five and “balance of work and motherhood” for scores between six and eight. The group scoring between nine and twelve on the index was recoded as putting “motherhood first.” The percentages for “motherhood first” are displayed in the tables displaying crosstabular results, and “motherhood first” is coded as one in the logistic regression analyses. Independent Variables—The primary independent variable used in these analyses is year. In the crosstabular analyses, year is transformed into decade, and in the logistic regression analyses, year is transformed into sequential numbering beginning with one for 1972 and ending with twenty-six for 2006. Control Variables—Sex is the main control variable in this study; all analyses are performed separately for conservative Christian women and men. In the logistic regression analyses, age, education level, income (logged and standardized in 1986 dollars), rate of church attendance and southern residency are also used as control variables.
3. Results Table 1 displays the first set of crosstabular analyses (using Chi-square and gamma; for the sake of brevity, these statistics are only reported in the table) of gender ideologies by decade, controlling for sex, and then gender ideologies by sex, controlling for decade. First, the effect of decade will be examined. Every gender ideology has changed over time among conservative Christian men and women except the abortion ideology of men. Religiously conservative women have become increasingly “pro-life” over the last four decades. Opposition toward sexual freedoms seems to have decreased during the 1980s and 1990s but increased again in more recent times for women. The pattern of attitudes toward sexual freedoms is much less
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1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
χ2 (difference by decade)
Γ (difference by decade)
N
Percent who are pro-life
Men Women χ2 (difference by sex) Γ (difference by sex)
26.1% 23.3% 2.5 −.024
23.6% 27.5% 7.7* .043
21.4% 28.4% 14.7** .106
26.9% 34.8% 10.4** .102
8.9 29.6***
−.004 .057
3255 4766
Percent opposed to sex-freedoms
Men Women χ2 (difference by sex) Γ (difference by sex)
53.4% 63.6% 10.0** .165
50.5% 56.2% 11.1** .072
52.4% 55.6% 9.9** .014
51.6% 61.8% 20.4*** .113
19.7** 54.1***
−.024 −.051
1650 2470
Percent say “mother first”
Men Women χ2 (difference by sex) Γ (difference by sex)
59.2% 46.0% 9.19** −.261
38.3% 27.7% 41.6*** −.269
32.8% 24.9% 98.1*** −.287
35.9% 23.2% 67.4*** −.343
46.1*** 68.4***
−.101 −.127
2479 3838
Percent opposed to female politicians
Men Women χ2 (difference by sex) Γ (difference by sex)
60.1% 56.1% 2.3 .082
43.7% 43.2% .063 .011
29.5% 30.6% .363 −.027
29.5% 25.7% 2.75 .097
177.2*** 233.5***
.339 .332
3089 4761
∗
Significant at the .05 level. Significant at the .01 level. ∗∗∗ Significant at the .001 level. ∗∗
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Table 1 Ideology by decade and sex, conservative Christians only.
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Table 2 Logistic regressions, conservative Christian men only.
Age Education Income (logged) South Church attendance Year Number of cases ∗∗ ∗∗∗
Opposed to abortion rights
Opposed to sexual freedom
Favor mother role first
Opposed to female politicians
−.007 (.004) −.078*** (.020) −.067 (.058) −.170 (.117) .258*** (.022) .008 (.007) 2170
.020*** (.005) −.092*** (.027) −.064 (.081) −.011 (.147) .366*** (.029) .007 (.008) 1090
.031*** (.005) −.074*** (.021) .052 (.065) .066 (.121) .158*** (.022) −.024** (.008) 1581
.014*** (.004) −.103*** (.018) .050 (.056) .053 (.105) .102*** (.019) −.046*** (.006) 1973
Significant at the .01 level. Significant at the .001 level.
clear for religiously conservative men. Both conservative Christian men and women have put increasingly less emphasis on women’s roles as mother from the 1970s to the present. Again, both male and female conservative Christians have become significantly less opposed to the notion of women politicians. Now, turning attention to sex-based differences in each decade (also seen in Table 1), outcomes depend on the particular ideology of interest. Sex-based differences in abortion attitudes first appear in the 1980s and continue to strengthen as time goes by; conservative Christian women are increasingly more pro-life than their male counterparts. In every decade, there is a significant sex-based difference in terms of opposition toward sexual freedoms. Religiously conservative women are more opposed to sexual freedoms than religiously conservative men, but the size of the gap remains fairly consistent. With regard to the importance of motherhood in women’s lives, there is a sex-based difference in every decade as well. Conservative Christian men are consistently more likely than conservative Christian women to emphasize “motherhood over work.” Lastly, there is no sex-based difference in the level at which religiously conservative men and women are likely to support a female role in politics in any of the decades under study. Table 2 displays the results of four logistic regressions performed on information gathered from male conservative Christians. Looking at the first column where abortion ideology is the dependent variable, as education decreases and church attendance increases, conservative Christian men are more likely to oppose abortion rights; there has been no significant change over time. The second column shows that the older, less educated and more frequent church attendees are more opposed to sexual freedoms; there has been no significant change over time with regard to opinions of sexual freedoms. When it comes to women’s roles as mothers, male conservative Christians who are older, less educated and attend church services more frequently are more likely to believe that motherhood should come first in women’s lives, but there has been a significant decrease in this attitude over time among religiously conservative men. Lastly, conservative Christian men who are older, less educated and attend church more often are more opposed to female politicians, but this opposition has been reducing over time as well. Table 3 displays the results of four logistic regressions performed on the responses of female conservative Christians. Looking first at abortion attitudes, religiously conservative women
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Table 3 Logistic regressions, conservative Christian women only.
Age Education Income (logged) South Church attendance Year Number of cases
Opposed to abortion rights
Opposed to sexual freedom
Favor mother role first
Opposed to female politicians
.000 (.004) −.092*** (.022) −.163*** (.050) .019 (.110) .315*** (.023) .038*** (.006) 2346
.034*** (.006) −.059* (.029) −.145* (.072) .136 (.154) .419*** (.030) −.003 (.008) 1156
.030*** (.005) −.083** (.028) −.179** (.060) −.107 (.140) .134*** (.027) −.033*** (.009) 1858
.019*** (.004) −.093*** (.021) −.032 (.048) .466*** (.103) .115*** (.020) −.052*** (.006) 2223
∗
Significant at the .05 level. Significant at the .01 level. ∗∗∗ Significant at the .001 level. ∗∗
with less education, less income and higher church attendance are more opposed to abortion rights, and as a group, they are becoming more opposed to abortion rights over time. Conservative Christian women who are older, have less education, earn lower incomes and attend church more frequently are more opposed to sexual freedoms; there has been no significant change over time. The older, less educated, lower earning conservative Christian women who attend church regularly are most likely to believe that motherhood should come first in women’s lives, but this emphasis is becoming less pronounced as time passes. Lastly, religiously conservative women are more likely to be opposed to female political leadership when they are older, less educated, live in the southern United States and attend church frequently, but as a group, they are becoming less opposed to female politicians over time.
4. Discussion These data provide a more in-depth look into the conservative Christian community in the United States. These analyses include a general look at the ideologies of religiously conservative men and women separately from 1972 through the 2006. To understand the difference gender made, men and women are not only directly compared in each decade, but their patterns of change over time are also taken into consideration. The stereotypes of conservative Christians might lead one to believe that they are all equally conservative when it comes to women’s roles in the family and society and the amount of freedom that women should have. However, there has been significant change in their gender ideologies over time as well as significant differences between their male and female members. There was a clear progression toward greater acceptance of prominent roles for women in the political realm and the workplace among all conservative Christians. With regard to opposition to female politicians, there was no significant difference between male and female conservative Christians; they were all equally accepting in each decade under study. Evidence of this can be seen in the most recent presidential election when conservative Christians enthusiastically rallied support for the female Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. However, in every decade under study, religiously conservative men were more likely than religiously
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conservative women to put motherhood ahead of labor force participation for women; therefore, it seems that conservative men still expect working women to “actively and intensively mother” despite the long hours. As we know from the work of many gender scholars, the “Second Shift” is a burden that prevents many American women from fully reaching economic equality, and Ellison and Bartkowski (2002) confirm that conservative Christian women do even more hours on the “second shift” than mainline Christian women. When it comes to abortion ideology, the gender-based patterns changed significantly. Conservative Christian women have become increasingly opposed to this right. Conservative Christian men did not significantly change over time in terms of their beliefs about abortion. In general, men were significantly less likely to be extremely “pro-life” than women. Conservative women exhibited steady increase in their propensity to be extremely “pro-life” across the four decades. Perhaps this tendency among conservative Christian women represents a macro-level attempt to reestablish “balance” in the religious community. It is possible that religiously conservative women are attempting to placate fears about their increasing workforce participation and greater economic contributions to their families by actively opposing their own rights to abortion thereby working to reduce their own sexual freedoms. Sexual freedoms represent another issue where conservative Christian women have become increasingly conservative over time, whereas conservative Christian men have become less conservative over time. This study confirms the findings of Hoffman and Miller (1997) and McConkey (2001) that religiously conservative people started becoming more accepting of sexual freedoms in the 1980s and 1990s but these data also show that conservative Christian women (but not men) had a complete turn-around by the 2000s. In addition, in each decade under study, women were significantly more opposed to sexual freedoms than men. In general, conservative Christian men have grown more tolerant of women’s rights than conservative Christian women over the last four decades. However, religiously conservative men are still more likely to believe that women should put a great deal of emphasis on their domestic roles but express a new acceptance of female politicians and increased openness to abortion rights and sexual freedoms. Religiously conservative women are just the opposite; they de-emphasize motherhood in favor of work roles but are becoming increasingly opposed to their own sexual freedoms. It is impossible to compare these results to past studies since none separate their analyses by sex. When controls are entered into a logistic regression model, we learn that, for both male and female conservative Christians, age, education and church attendance are significant predictors of gender ideologies. When predicting levels of opposition to sexual freedoms and female politicians and the primacy of motherhood in women’s lives, the older the conservative Christian person is the more conservative their position; age does not make a significant difference on abortion ideologies. The more educated a conservative Christian person is the more liberal their position is with regard to all of the ideologies under study; this is opposite of Bryant (2006) findings. And, the more a conservative Christian person attends church services, the more conservative their positions are on all of these gender ideologies. The analyses of conservative Christian women displayed some trends that were unique to women. When it comes to opposition to abortion, opposition to sexual freedoms and emphasis on motherhood, conservative Christian women with higher incomes are more liberal in their
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views; income has no significant impact on the views of conservative Christian men. With regard to support for female politicians, conservative Christian women who live in the south have more conservative views than conservative Christian women who live elsewhere. Place of residence has no effect on men’s gender ideologies. When it comes to change over time, conservative Christian men and women have both become more accepting of female politicians, and both have put significantly less emphasis on motherhood in women’s lives. As discussed above, it was shown that religiously conservative women have become more accepting of female labor force participation than their male counterparts and that increased incomes for women have a liberalizing effect on their gender ideologies; therefore, these two trends will likely have a compound effect on religiously conservative women’s gender ideologies. Neither men nor women significantly changed over time with regard to sexual freedoms once controls are entered into the model. Past findings noted a decreasing opposition to sexual freedoms in the 1980s and 1990s, but this study shows that conservative Christians have reverted back to their 1970s levels of opposition again. Past studies have noted that conservative Christians are becoming increasingly opposed to abortion rights over time, but this study shows that it is only the religiously conservative women who are responsible for this trend. Now we know that there are significant differences between conservative Christian men and conservative Christian women. So, we are left with the questions of why are female conservatives more opposed to abortion, and why are male conservatives more likely to support traditional roles for women? Perhaps the differences in the gender ideologies of male and female conservative Christians are due, in part, to the lower income earned by females and the higher rates of church attendance on the part of females. Conservative Christian women (like all women in the United States) have earned significantly less than their male counterparts in every decade under study.2 In addition, conservative Christian women attend church services more often than conservative Christian men in every decade under study.3 Greater church attendance and lower incomes are both associated with higher levels of conservatism for women. This issue deserves further study.
Notes 1. According to these women, “truly irreconcilable” differences are defined as situations where the husband and wife have discussed the matter extensively but cannot come to an agreement; the women report that this is different, in their minds, from straight-forward submission. Many conservative Christian wives feel that their marriages are partnerships. 2. Income is presented as median incomes in 1986 dollars; t-tests were performed on logged income values. In the 1970s, male conservative Christians ($20,011) earned significantly more than female conservative Christians ($8667) (t = 15.3, p < .001). In the 1980s, male conservative Christians ($18,094) earned significantly more than female conservative Christians ($10,850) (t = 15.3, p < .001). In the 1990s, male conservative Christians ($18,947) earned significantly more than female conservative Christians ($11,196) (t = 16.1, p < .001). In the 2000s, male conservative Christians ($20,651) earned significantly more than female conservative Christians ($12,508) (t = 11.1, p < .001).
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3. In terms of church attendance in the 1970s, 30% of male conservative Christians and 40.4% of female conservative Christians attended services once a week or more (X2 = 57.7, p < .001, Γ = .159). In the 1980s, 31.8% of male conservative Christians and 41% of female conservative Christians attended services once a week or more (X2 = 88.8, p < .001, Γ = .168). In the 1990s, 31.3% of male conservative Christians and 39.9% of female conservative Christians attended services once a week or more (X2 = 52.2, p < .001, Γ = .143). In the 2000s, 31.7% of male and 41.9% of female conservative Christians attended services once a week or more (X2 = 69.3, p < .001, Γ = .166).
Acknowledgements I thank Rae Lesser Blumberg, Casandra Kesler, the anonymous Social Science Journal reviewers and the Editor for all of the feedback related to this article.
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