The Religious Work Ethic and the Spirit of Patriarchy: Religiosity and the Gender Gap in Working for Its Own Sake, 1977 to 2018

Societal beliefs about women’s work have long been a metric for gender equality, with recent scholarship focusing on trends in these attitudes to assess the progress (or stalling) of the gender revolution. Moving beyond widely critiqued gender attitude questions thought to be the only available items for measuring change over time, this article considers women’s and men’s views toward their own work over the last half century. Traditional gender scripts frame women’s labor force participation as less than ideal, something to do if financially necessary but not because work is intrinsically rewarding. Historically, this gender frame was reinforced by religion. We examine the gender gap in working for its own sake over time and whether and how religious involvement moderates these trends. Overall, the gender gap has declined to the point where it is now virtually nonexistent. However, religious involvement acts as a countervailing influence, bolstering the gap such that frequently attending men and women have not yet converged in their desire to work. Although the most religious Americans have not yet converged, men’s dropping desire to work and women’s rising desire to work are society-wide trends, and even the most religious Americans could be expected to converge at some point in the future. Traditionalist institutions contribute to unevenness in the gender revolution, but preferences cannot explain the persistent society-wide precarity of women’s work: Women now prefer to work for work’s sake at the same rate men do.

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