There is some interesting research that is still ongoing but it shows that men are more likely to leave religions than women and that this is particularly true for Utah Mormons compared to those outside of Zion.

The pressure to serve a mission is the tentative cause for this. While in the past, it was strong enough to force doubters to enter the cult indoctrination program of the MTC, it's become weak enough now that all it does is severely annoy doubters and push them out.

Here's a somewhat older interview where this is discussed:

https://religionnews.com/2015/09/16/more-mormon-men-are-leaving-the-lds-church-say-researchers-but-especia

We've discussed this trend several times over the years.

I don't buy that the difference is expectations regarding missions. If it were, there should not be much difference between Utah and the rest of the church, where obligatory mission service is similarly entrenched, and yet there is a significant difference based on location. Moreover, women in many conservative religions, including the less tolerant forms of Islam as well as Catholicism, are more dedicated to their faiths than men.

The answer, I believe, lies in women's lack of alternatives. In Mormonism and some other religions women are told to get married and have children rather than gaining an education and job skills. Once they have invested so much in their religion, however, they are fully committed to that lifestyle and have little ability to alter their personal trajectories compared to educated men with professional CVs.

It isn't men running from missions that creates the imbalance: it's women's lack of viable alternatives.

I do personally know a woman who would like to leave her husband and faith but feels that she cannot due to the fact that she's been a stay at home mom for 15 years and has no college degree. So there's definitely something there.

It might also be that because antifeminist religions give men all the power in their faith communities that they are able to experience that the claims aren't true. My faith was strongly shaken, for instance, when I gave a healing priesthood blessing that didn't do a thing. My patriarchal blessing told me I child heal people so I absolutely believed that I could. Women don't get to have such experiences directly so that might also explain things.

In the interview, they explain why Utah Mormons feel more pressure to serve missions since there can be repercussions for those who don't that are outside of the church setting.

Your second paragraph presents a good point. Missions drive a lot of people out of the church. It is easier to see the evil if you see it, to put it bluntly, and men see more than women.

But the men are also freer to act on that disillusionment.

Then there's the Mom Penalty/Mommy Track.

If women leave the workforce for awhile, they have a resumé gap. It's best to fill that gap by trying to create a home business (think Etsy), and call yourself an entrepreneur. To avoid resumé padding, that business needs to enjoy a high level of success. Now you have to manage your business in addition to managing the kids and all the rest of the things SAH moms juggle. (I'm not writing about SAH fathers, because we're talking about women leaving TSCC.)

If women remain in the workforce and have children, there's an expectation that their work product will be sub-par because their focus will be elsewhere. That results in women often being overlooked for inclusion in prime project teams. Those teams help build a person's knowledge base, add clout, and provide networks and mentors.

Mentoring. Few women make it to the level of influential mentorship due to the roadblocks described above, and some men are reluctant to mentor women due to the roadblocks described above. Hunting and begging for a mentor is degrading and often futile.

Maybe we should write, "Had a hysterectomy" on our resumés.

ETA: But then we might adopt, so there's that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2020 03:06PM by Beth.

There is a lot of cultural pressure that women are emotional and men less so. I think Utah is a holdout for this in comparison to the nation more broadly.

Where the testimony is an emotional state, it may be more effective at trapping women who accept the pressure that they are more emotionally in tune.

Anecdotally, it strikes me that women here in UT seem more likely to leave for an emotionally loaded fact or event like polygamy or the fairness issues. Men for conflicts of history or data.

This is just my anecdotal perspective and I recognize there is a wide range of reasons for leaving regardless of gender.

To me at least, the difference between 'winning' & 'loser' lds men could be more obvious in Utah then in other places.
In my case a liar "tbm" (at least from church standpoint) divorced me bc I (a RM)wasn't 'mormon enough'.

I'm thinking that a lds man divorced by a Uber-Religious wife is more likely to exit Mormonism then others...

just my thought.

We left Mormonism and all of a sudden I had so much time on my hand that I went back to work full time.

I would certainly hope so!!!
More chicks for the rest of us

This is why Polygamy is necessary. Apostasy has reduced the population of temple worthy ales and as such plural marriage is a necessity.

Duh.

I have no evidence but a couple of thoughts might be that Mormonism gives lots of praise for women who have had children and stay at home. I'm recalling Mother's Day flowers and talks. I didn't see much praise given to men for much of anything. They got loaded down with time consuming meetings and obligations and shamed if they didn't do more and more. I knew a lot of LDS men who had not renewed their temple recommends (these are single men) and I sort of felt like it saved them from extra work and pressure. If they were less valiant they were not able to fulfill certain jobs they didn't really want. Leaving is another way to get out from under the pressure.

Also, as a single woman, I didn't feel much pressure to do anything. Nobody asked me to take high profile jobs in RS nor Stake callings. They always asked married women to take the higher up jobs. I was fine with that. I never sought praise or glory in service.I'm a natural born sloth. I left officially from Mormonism over facts not disaffection. If it hadn't been for pushy Mormons trying to shame me into activation I probably would have stayed inactive and done nothing more. Men get pushed much harder in my humble opinion.

I remember reading that something like 40% of male missionaries leave directly after their missions. A mission might be a deeply entrenched social expectation, but the men are still voting with their feet. Or it could be that they simply see too much of the internal workings of the church.

Maybe it is female "nature" that makes women more religious. Maybe that is just the way things are. Men commit more violent crimes than women do. This is male "nature". Will this difference between women and men ever change? Probably not. Is male nature worse than female nature in this regard? Yes, it is. Is female nature worse than male nature when it comes to religious adherence? Yes, it is, if religious adherence is a bad thing. You could make the argument that religious adherence is a good thing, at least for some people, whether or not the religion is true. If religious adherence is always a good thing for some people, then female nature regarding religious adherence is better than that of males some of the time. Religion has been part of human life for a long, long time, so it may have evolved to help humans to survive. And many people view women as the sex that is most concerned with survival.



Edited 12 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2020 04:14AM by behindcurtain.