(OPINION) A higher percentage of young women have left organized religion and identify as religiously unaffiliated than their male counterparts, prompting concerns about the future of religion in the United States, according to a recent survey.
The Survey Center on American Life released new research last week examining the views on religion in the U.S. based on responses collected from 5,459 American adults in 2023.
The survey found that in contrast to the older generations, women constitute a majority of Gen Zers who have disaffiliated from organized religion.
The majority of baby boomers (57%), Generation X (55%), and millennials (53%) who have left organized religion are men, while a solid majority of Generation Z (57%) who have abandoned organized religion are women.
The research suggests that young women’s skepticism about organized religion stems from a belief that most churches do not “treat men and women equally.”
When asked if they disagreed that “most churches and religious congregations treat men and women equally,” a small majority of women aged 65 and older (53%) and women between the ages of 50 and 64 (57%) answered in the affirmative.
A much larger majority of women between the ages of 30 and 49 (64%) and women between the ages of 18 and 29 (65%) thought churches treat men and women unequally.
With the exception of men between the ages of 50 and 64, 49% of whom disagree that churches treat women the same way they do men, majorities of men agree with their female counterparts about churches’ treatment of women.
Fifty-five percent of men between the ages of 30 and 49, 54% of men between the ages of 18 and 29, and 51% of men aged 65 and older believe that churches treat men and women unequally.
While Gen Z is the first generation in which a higher share of women have left organized religion than men, the youngest generation of American adults is also the first generation in which a larger percentage of women identify as religiously unaffiliated than their male counterparts.
Thirty-nine percent of Gen Z women describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated compared to 34% of Gen Z men who place themselves in the same category. By contrast, 37% of millennial men identify as religiously unaffiliated, a slightly higher share than the 34% of millennial women who said the same.
A similarly small gap exists between religiously unaffiliated Gen X men (23%) and religiously unaffiliated Gen X women (27%). A noticeably larger percentage of baby boomer men (23%) than baby boomer women (14%) consider themselves religiously unaffiliated.
