Young women in Generation Z are more likely than young men to disaffiliate from religion, according to a survey of over 5,400 Americans conducted by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life.
In the previous generations—the Baby Boomers, Generation X, and the Millennials—men have been more likely than women to disaffiliate.
“There is a cultural misalignment between more traditional churches and places of worship and young women who have grown increasingly liberal,” said Daniel Cox and Kelsey Eyre Hammond of the Survey Center on American Life. “Since 2015, the number of young women who identify as liberal has rapidly increased … This has also coincided with the rise in LGBTQ identity among young women—nearly three in ten women under the age of 30 now identify as something other than straight.”
Carmel Richardson of The American Conservative commented, “What might it mean for young women to outnumber young men at elite universities, while young men outnumber young women at church? Certainly, these two pieces—women leaving church and men leaving college—say something about the relative status of men and women today, and perhaps also about the two sexes’ penchant for prestige … Young women leaving church might be doing so due to a staunch commitment to egalitarianism, but more likely they are leaving because of a more general sense that church is not cool.”