Women who attend religious congregations that have systematic gender inequality in power and resources report worse health than women who go to more inclusive ones, according to new research published in the American Sociological Review.
Susan Madsen, director of the Utah Women and Leadership Project at Utah State University, highlighted the research in an op-ed for The Salt Lake Tribune — one that prompted another op-ed in response.
Madsen connects the Florida State University research to her own work in Utah. A practicing Latter-day Saint herself, she believes there’s sexism in all religions, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In more religious places such as Utah, there’s a greater power imbalance, she said, and that contributes to higher rates of violence. Her research has found that one in three Utah women will experience some form of contact sexual violence, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
“And it's not that any religion teaches this,” Madsen said. “It's misuse of what's happening.”
Data scientist Stephen Cranney agrees there’s sexism in some corners of all religious institutions that needs to be addressed. However, he also believes it’s important to note that women and men who attend church overall report better health and happiness.
Cranney specializes in religion data and crunched the numbers from the Pew Religious Landscape Study and Cooperative Election Survey. Along with co-authors Shima Baughman and Loren Marks, they responded to Madsen.
Cranney felt Madsen was implying that religions that don’t ordain women are bad for women’s health.
The literature is “very clear” that people who go to church are happier, in both religions that ordain women and those that do not, he said. Cranney has also found that Latter-day Saint women score about 0.1 point higher than non-LDS women on a 3-point happiness scale.
“I wanted to kind of push back against this narrative that unless you are an Episcopalian going to a service with a female pastor, that religion is harmful for women's health, right?” Cranney said. “Because that's really not the case.”
All of that data doesn’t discount the new study about women in religion in Madsen’s view because Cranney’s data isn’t broken down by state and doesn’t talk about sexism. Madsen clarified to KUER that she isn’t suggesting that women be ordained — she’s talking about men listening to women and treating them with respect, and women having some decision-making power.
“We have the choice to do that in our church or any other church,” she said. “To not be, if I'm a man, dictating everything, but to support and really listen. And that's tricky. That's tricky to do.”
She knows women in LDS congregations who have been looked down on, shunned or treated differently after a divorce, she said. On the other hand, other congregations are supporting women — Madsen knows women who went through a hard time and felt like their church community was a protective factor.
Madsen knows that highlighting issues in religion is going to make some Utahns uncomfortable, but she feels called to this research about sexism. In the near future, she hopes to study what an inclusive environment in a congregation looks like.
