According to

https://www.pewforum.org/2009/07/24/a-portrait-of-mormons-in-the-us/


A majority of Mormons are women (56%). Women make up more than half of other major Christian traditions as well, including Catholics (54%) and members of the evangelical (53%) and historically black Protestant (60%) traditions. By contrast, majorities of the major non-Christian traditions in the U.S. as well as the unaffiliated tend to be male.

Women tend to be more religious it seems? How come?
I do remember seeing statistics on atheism and males make up over 50%.

~~~~iceman9090

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/latter-day-saints/the-mormon-gender-gap-widens.aspx

In general, Utah LDS single women outnumber single LDS men by quite a bit.
2008: LDS women 60% LDS men 40%
2020: based on trends, probably more than 60% women
Outside of Utah different: Single women 53% single men 47%

Activity rate of men possibly lower than women also.

2013: Large SLC singles ward: 264 men 429 women
2013: Dallin H. Oaks: "The Church is losing men at a far higher rate than young women and there aren't enough men to go around."

2011: Marlin Jensen (former Church Historian and member First Q of Seventy) ". . attrition has accelerated in the last 10 years. We've never had a period of apostacy like we're having now."

lots of info
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283733702_Increasing_Sex_Ratio_Imbalance_Among_Utah_Mormons_Sources_and_Implications

> 2011: Marlin Jensen (former Church Historian and
> member First Q of Seventy) ". . attrition has
> accelerated in the last 10 years. We've never had
> a period of apostacy like we're having now."

What a coincidence:
RfM has been quite popular late 90s to present!!!
(and a ton of websites with the true LDS history - no fluff stuff)

“2013: Dallin H. Oaks: "The Church is losing men at a far higher rate than young women and there aren't enough men to go around."”

That’s enough to make a guy consider going back. An average Joe could pick up a hottie. But then she would be Mormon.

This is where the church’s growth strategy is in trouble. The cult is so wacky that the only way to get new members is to give birth to them. Women are programmed to hold out for an RM, which doesn’t work if guys are quitting the church instead of going on missions.

+bradley:

"Women are programmed to hold out for an RM, which doesn’t work if guys are quitting the church instead of going on missions."

==Is it too late for mormonism to return back to its polygynistic roots?

~~~~iceman9090

According to BYU polls, Utahns with "no religious affiliation" have increased a lot:
1996 9.7%
2008 18.5%

Pew Research: "no religious affiliation" in Utah up to 22%

It's estimated that over 85% of exmormons do not get active in another religion.

One explanation for changing Utah is simply that many people move to Utah, and many of them are not (and never will be) Mormon.

In about 2011, Apostle Russell M Ballard stated that "the Church was worried about massive losses in the 18 to 30 age group."

. . . well Mr Ballard . . . keep worrying 'cause the retention keeps getting worse and worse. Too bad most of you old dudes won't live long enough to see LDS membership literally decline each and every year. (estimated time for that steady decline approx 2040 and beyond)

It is sickening to think of how many of these women will not marry and live secret lonely/loathing lives but the solution to the problem is not ... the moremen church. This is the problem itself.

The best thing for them is to realize people in and out of their church have value and God would approve of them marrying one of his children. I mean they are still all his children aren't they?
So go ahead, single men and women marry someone that actually was meant for you instead of someone who can be faithful enough to wear the underwear they are told and recite the same sales script for nearly two years. Meaningless qualities and entirely underwhelming accomplishments outside of a Fruit of Loom company gathering and/or vacuum sales meetings.

Temple Marriage itself is a ridiculous doctrine (esp. considering all the unanswered questions it creates rather than solves) and it was designed to consolidate control over the family's finances/usefulness to the church and lack of compliance to any instructions of LDS inc. regardless of how self serving they might be. As a consequence, it creates an underlying atmosphere of fear where everything is a "veiled" threat/request.

How foolish it is that some of the single LDS people actually envy those who have become willing corporate slaves. You would think after enough shaming in their local ward for not being married some would give up but they view it as a trial that their fellow christians are hardly christ-like in how they view and subtly treat all those who lack this level of subservience. It is even openly advertised that those single people will be the downline of the higher married leveled mormons, producing for them. No wonder Utah is the MLM capital of the world. It is all out in the open to any observant person. Cult!

This statistic is what drove the whole "men's movement" in churches in the early '00s. Many books came out, many sermons were preached about a more masculine Jesus--he was a construction worker after all--and how we should be making church more appealing to men and raising our boys to be "real men".

Fast forward to today, when a segment of our political and social spectrum is obsessed with "Alpha Males", tough guys, Authoritarianism, Putin, Kim, etc.

Not only quantity as anonculus eludes to, but in Mormonism men/males/boys are treated as cogs in the wheel of a demanding god who 'loves them' but treats them as expendable Morbots who must be Church Broke to ascend to leadership...

If this isn't a model for being shallow yet compliant, what could possibly be?

However, the women get to make doughnuts while their men-folk are at the Important Meetings, down to the age of 12 (or close enough).

Women too are 'our most valuable possessions', so they can relax but MUST keep their attractiveness if not sexual allure maintained because their 'weak' husbands will most likely pay attention to another female who's younger, more shapley, or possibly of better family connections than the current incumbant is...

So, What else is new?

Hapless women.

+1 on what else is new. This is a dog-bites-man story. Women live longer than men. That alone would put them in a majority, even if the attrition rate for being church members was identical between the sexes.

Yes, they are a majority. Not an overwhelming majority, however. And more than a few of the YW crowd refuse to make the transition into RS, and dump Mormonism as they enter adulthood.

I imagine this distresses the Q15 mightily. They were hoping the women would give the young men incentive to stay in. I get the sense that a goodly portion of all the Millennials are sprinting out of LDS Inc.

Starting when I was a missionary, and continuing through various leadership callings, I was aware of how there were more “righteous” (from a Mormon standpoint) women than men. When one half of a married couple was a member, it was the wife that was a member the great majority of the time. The same thing with one active/one inactive spouse-it was almost always the wife who was active. I’d seen several small branches struggling to get by, because the attendees were disproportionally female (hmmm, if only they could have given priesthood to the women).

I’m very ashamed to say that this was a factor that helped ease my mind about polygamy. It seemed to me that there would be many more women than men who would qualify for the Celestial Kingdom. God couldn’t force those worthy sisters to stay single throughout eternity, could he?

+CrispingPin:
“I’m very ashamed to say that this was a factor that helped ease my mind about polygamy. It seemed to me that there would be many more women than men who would qualify for the Celestial Kingdom. God couldn’t force those worthy sisters to stay single throughout eternity, could he?”


==Mormons believe that they will still have a gender in the afterlife?
That’s different.

In christianity, your gender is gone. It is not officially written in the Bible, but that is what christians believe.
Having a gender in heaven is pointless.
On the other hand, there is that weird passage that says that the children of god found Earth women attractive and came down to Earth and boom boom shabang. Then, there is something about giants.

That sounds like aliens visiting Earth, not that I believe any of that story.

~~~~iceman9090

From “The Family - a Proclamation to the World” (which is essentially scripture in the Mormon church):

“Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.”

It's been a few years since the Ordain Women scare. I remember there was a poll taken then among mormons and something like 60% of men said they would accept women getting the priesthood, but something like 10% of woman would accept that. ( The numbers I remember might be off a bit, but it was quite surprising ratio).

I think if wives/girlfriends/mothers didn't have any pull on men to go to church, attendance would drop by about 70% for men. I live part time in a small town in Utah, and while working on a service project for the town last summer several of the men confided in me that they hate going to church and hate having to tell their kids to follow the leaders a lot of the time, but their wives would leave them if they opted out. Times have changed in rural small towns in utah Non-mos, ex-mos, jack-mos are treated pretty much as equals by the brothers, but many of the sisters see non-members as some kind of threat. There are some sisters who also seem to be losing interest in the church and interested in finding other ways.

I Agree;

in the long run, ChurchCo will be a much better experience for nearly Everyone;

but in the short term, (most mormon 'thinking'), many will dis-engage saying that the leaders have lost their way, etc.

Always the trade-offs in Mormonism, I suspect that if so many 'men' weren't pushed by parents & wives to get into leadership roles, the void would have necessitated calling women into those positions;

Doughnuts No More!! Get 'em at the Store!!

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I was repeatedly taught that women are intrinsically more spiritual than men, which is why there will need to be plural marriage in the Celestial Kingdom.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Here are a few:

1) Men get to see the inside of the Morg much more closely at a young age than women do. I don't know how it is now, but every boy I knew in the 90s was asked about beating the bishop. I never met a female who was asked about it. (Though obviously some were.)

Additionally, boys thanks to their "priesthood," are exposed to other nonsense like home teaching and fast offerings. They see that many people who are inactive and have normal lives don't need the church. Some may even experience lying about these tasks and how there is no "discernment" to put a stop to it--indeed, deceit is often rewarded.

2) Religion, especially American Christianity, tend to be organized to the benefit of a tiny number of dominant males. All other males who are not in the leadership caste get no real perks. They're still expected to do hard work but don't get the female adulation or praise from the elderly. After a decade or two of being treated like crap with no benefits, that starts to get old.

Women are taken advantage of greatly as well but it's part and parcel of the faith that they'll never get to be the leaders so, in a Stockholm Syndrome twist, they are less likely to feel slighted.

3) Polling has shown that men tend to be more interested in politics or philosophy than women. The question of whether Mormonism is true is not something that is of interest to people who aren't interested in philosophy.

This trend is greatly exacerbated among Mormons since girls are not encouraged to seek intellectual pursuits. The leaders seal the deal by making young women recite cult chants multiple times a week as a group.

4) As adults, women have few opportunities compared to men to teach the doctrines. And, as everyone here knows, the deeper you get into the history of Mormonism, the more troubling material you find.

"Women are programmed to hold out for an RM, which doesn’t work if guys are quitting the church instead of going on missions."

So why can you program women, but not men? Why not just program men to stay in the church, if programming works.

Now for the real reason women like church - it better satisfies their biological roles.

For the survival of our species, women have been wired to bear and nurture children(yes there are exceptions). In doing so, they are vulnerable and need support from a man. Church supports them in pressuring a man to be the sole breadwinner while they have kids. More money, less work for her.

In addition, church shames men for any lust for other women, which better guarantees she gets his resources, for less effort, if the competition is eliminated. She can call on the bishop to punish her man should his thoughts stray (porn).

And men are naturally interested in sex, which is largely suppressed, and considered dirty.

Men generally prefer more physically active fun, but church is a lot of sitting - the same reason boys do less well in school.

Generally, men think more logically, and are more likely to smell BS. Of course, it is also easier to smell BS when you don't really like being there.

I've also got this theory that generally, women are less committed to her man, than vice versa, as most divorces are initiated by women. And as I mentioned, if husband gets out of line, call the bishop and get him straightened out. So use the church as enforcement, kind of like calling the cops in domestic disputes. So while men have the useless priesthood, women actually have much control.

So is the marriage about love, or about getting stuff (money, status), and is the bigger commitment to church?

And of course, as long as women control sex, they will have the ultimate power. Especially when in church where sex is so restricted.

On another forum, I read of an LDS guy who hadn't had sex for 18 years, and was reprimanded by his wife for looking down her blouse. Yet she was a RS president and all appeared well.

Women want the priesthood - most guys would gladly trade it for control over when they get sex.