2
domestic duties. Their domestic focus then leads them to allocate more free time to
religious activity. Similar arguments focus on the role of mother, which has a natural fit
with greater religiosity because “it involves such activities as teaching the children
morality and caring for the physical and spiritual well-being of other family members”
(Miller and Stark 2002: 1402). A third explanation suggests that gender inequality in
social, political, and economic power teaches women helplessness and submissiveness.
This keeps women out of the full-time labor force (again giving them more free time to
spend on religion), or leads them to seek religious compensation for their oppression
(classic deprivation theory).
1
We view the second and third arguments as structural
rather than socialization theories because they focus on power differences and women’s
experiences within a gender-unequal social order, although we grant that internalization
during socialization may play a role. But scholars arguing for these explanations have
generally assumed the causal primacy of primary gender socialization, while failing to
directly measure or test it (Miller and Stark 2002). Those few studies that have attempted
to explicitly test socialization’s effects have produced unconvincing results (citations).
Miller and Stark’s alternative theory claims that men’s greater preferences for
short-sighted risk-taking, or their risk-preferences, are at the root of the gender gap. They
claim that being irreligious constitutes a risk because of the threat of divine punishment
after death (Miller and Hoffmann 1995; Miller and Stark 2002). Women are then more
religious because they dislike taking risks, preferring instead to hedge their bets and take
a long-term strategic approach to life and whatever comes afterwards. Accordingly,
women accept Pascal’s Wager, taking the position that there is little to lose by behaving
1
Miller and Stark point out that the first two of these are individual-level processes, while the third is
macro-structural.
Convention