Public Religion and Gendered Attitudes

Do religious commitments hinder support for gender equality and contribute to the stalled gender revolution as a social problem? Answering this question requires specifying what kinds of religious commitments affect what specific gendered attitudes. Using a cultural approach to the study of religion, we distinguish personal religious commitments (piety and practice) from public religious commitments (preferences for religious order in social life). Using a large national survey, we demonstrate (1) that support for public religious authority has a stronger positive relationship with support for separate gender roles and ambivalent sexism than does personal piety; (2) that these relationships do not hold for gender identity salience; and (3) that support for separate gender roles mediates the relationship between support for public religious order and support for a gender-equitable policy: paid family leave. We argue that public religious commitments in the United States are semi-autonomous from personal religiosity, and we identify one specific public religious repertoire that provides support for a public order based on a binary and complementary understanding of gender.