Furthermore Joan Arehart-Treichel has found that in 49 countries women are more likely to be religious and in terms of males the numbers are and with the exception of only one case—Brazil—the differences are significant or highly significant statistically.
Secondly a piece of contextual evidence towards the view of women is that women see God as loving and caring and men view God as controlling and dominant. Patriarchal ideals for different religions (eg Christianity) led to the view of women as not being liable to lead the church. Orthodox churches and Roman Catholic churches exclude women from hierarchy. In 1992 the Church of England issued a law to allow women to join hierarchy of the church with many churches protesting. Additionally Mary Daly found that Christianity can be viewed as a patriarchal myth. Stories of the bible exclude women from becoming great role models, e.g. Moses. There is no woman as powerful or influential as him in the bible. This is significant to my work because the view of women in religion affects the religiosity. This gives an explanation to why women are more religious than men.
Fifthly Greely suggested that before women acquired a partner and having children their religiosity was not dissimilar to men’s, (although they were slightly more committed to religion). When you start taking care of people you begin to accept more responsibility. Women are more involved with caring than with patriarchal responsibilities. Caring seems to be associated more with a religious outlook. This is related to work as it suggests religiosity and the explanations as to why women are more religious.
Sixthly it is believed by sociologists that women are taught to be more submissive, passive, obedient and nurturing than males. These traits are compatible with religiosity as these are highly honoured by all religions. Also men who express these norms tend to be more religious than men who don’t. Females who have lower rates of participation in the church believe women who do more church related activities have higher rates of commitment and personal identity. This is related to religiosity as it coincides with well being and thoughts of church from the female point of view.
Concerning new religious movements Bruce 1995 suggested that the ratio of female involvement in establishments of NRM’s was about 2:1. Thompson noted that women were more likely to experience poverty in comparison to men and those who are more likely to join religious sects. For example some cult offers rewards for offering more money to the group, the more a member gives away his money; the greater is the reward from God.
Moreover Concerning new age movements historically nature has been perceived the role of women is seen through their femininity. That is, as being naturally different creatures to males more attuned to the natural rhythms of life. Philosophies of the new age cults believe women tend to be afforded a higher status than men. This explains the reason why women tend to be more involved in religious movements.
Likewise in fundamentalism the revival of this in the past decade has played a major role in attempting to reverse the trends of women’s increasing sovereignty, and their pursuit of fulfilment towards motherhood. In America opposition to women controlling their fertility through abortion has lead to violence with religious fundamentalist pro- life groups.
With this information on various religious establishment from views on fundamentalism, NAM’s and NRM’s. These are important to my research as religiosity in any religion is an issue, and has difficulty in being measured. The view of females in all of these will lead to whether women are more religious than men.
METHODOLOGY
(824) I am going to use a sample of 10 males from my church and from the sixth form centre I attend. I will be using a series of five questionnaires and five structured interviews for the chosen 10 participants. The reason for using interviews is that interviewers can also bring out more honest and more sensitive information The interviewer, however, can investigate for deeper answers, ask for explanation and examples, discover new relationships, and if any questions are ambiguous to the participant they can be. Interviewers can get detailed information on what causes problems or benefits. In addition, they are absorbed in social systems and cultures, and gain a much better grasp of the organization. The use of questionnaires in my research is they the responses are gathered in a standardised way, questionnaires are more objective. Generally it is relatively quick to collect information using a questionnaire; furthermore questionnaires can collect a large amount of information. The choice of using interviews meant deciding on structured and unstructured. I found that with a structured interview there is a specific objective which is routinely followed also the information collected is related to what you wish to be measured. Unstructured interviews help you to understand the general view of the problem. I will decide to use structured interviews. The key strengths of the method are the two different ways being used for my data collection. This will provide data in two different forms. There is no better form of collecting information of measuring religiosity between males and females. Using a survey will not provide in depth answers which I will need.
Limitations of my chosen method are the time consumption issues with interviews especially with a structured interview as in comparison to unstructured which look at information more in interactionalised sense.
Issues concerning this work are also two different methods of research which again raises the issue of time consumption and also being able to interview the men in my church only on Sundays as they are busy throughout the week.
Using males from my sixth form centre raises the issue of them being able to keep concentration and also answer the questions in depth.
I will target my access population through church as I am an inside member it will be easier to access them. Concerning 6th form students I will be finding them in the common room as this is where a majority of the students are based.
The sample will contain 10 males 5 from the sixth form and 5 from my church. 3 students will conduct the questionnaire and 2 will use interviews and this method will be used with the males in my church. I have chosen this sample size as using more people will make the work too much of a burden. Also to gain in-depth results I don’t need to have too many people as I will gain all the information I will need. I will use opportunity sampling as I will be interviewing people who are available at that time making it more convenient for them so it does not disturb their timetable.
Sources of my research which may be of error is using he methods I have used to collect data. The disadvantage of using questionnaires is that participants may be biased in how they answer their questions and not give valid responses secondly concerning the males in my church I can only interview them on Sundays throughout the whole week. There is more access to the 6th form students the only disadvantage is to whether they will be willing to participate in the questionnaires, and a structured interview.
I have to consider the ethical issues of whether the participants will agree to take part which is informed consent and also they will need information on the type of questions being asked or this could raise issues of deception. Participants must also be fully debriefed and know why and how they are taking part in this research.
The key themes of my research will be attendance levels to church, participation in church activities, roles played in the church and their opinions on church and the roles of females, for my own interest I will be testing out Miller and Hoffman’s theory of how men view God in comparison to women although they are not included in my sample I will ask the males for their opinions, These will be discovered in the interviews I will conduct but on the questionnaires I will look at attendance levels of males the opinions of their own religiosity and what church means to them. From this I will be able to discover whether males are more religious than females. Having conducted a pilot study I found that one of the questions I aimed to ask were ambiguous. The question was ‘What roles do you believe women play in the church’.
