Good discussion. My comment was based on Activity as measured by my personal experience with Church records and activity in about 5 different units. Here in the US it seems to me that Women ARE more active then men on average. The men seem more alienated to me.

As for Africa. Julie has repeated this claim that Men are more active then women in Africa. In my 2 year mission in South Africa and Namibia this was really not the case. We had entire branches of women and children with a sprinkling of men. This pattern was consistent in tribal dominated units across SA and Namibia. The only place where it was not true was in White wards and branches.

In the tribal areas we would tract with a specific goal. A married couple with children and a job, car, phone, etc. Often a branch of 50-100 actives would only have one or two couples like this. I do understand from missionaries that served later then I did that they were starting to baptize and retain more men and complete families.

Men just don’t attend and participate nearly as much.

You’re right. This just goes to show how difficult it is to understand what conclusions we can safely draw from data.

People get onto the records of the LDS church not only by joining it, but also by being born into it. Our numbers are more likely to track the overall male/female population breakdown because we do a better job of tracking our members from birth. Consequently, activity rates are more revealing than the number of men and women on the rolls.

People also join churches for non-religious reasons. I know a woman who became a Methodist because the church ran a pre-school near her work, and they offered reduced fees to members.

I’m not sure about whether the data Heaton was discussing were “on the rolls” or “in the pews.” My impression is that they were the latter because I recall he mentioned the Church Membership Survey. If he had just been interested in members on the rolls, I’m sure he could have just looked at counts of member records.

Here’s a little more data that suggests that Heaton was talking about participating members. In the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, Mormons were found to be pretty middle of the road in being 54% women (1.17:1, Exhibit 11). Of course this is religious identification and not participation. The overall woman to man ratio is 1.06:1, which is dramatically different from the figures in my second table. (Note that the 52% = 1.08:1 figure at the bottom of Exhibit 11 is for the whole adult population, not the sum of the people identifying with a particular denomination.) So men may identify with a religion nearly as often as do women. Men just don’t attend and participate nearly as much.

I don’t think Ziff is arguing that a greater gender imbalance in the Church would be either positive or negative (it would likely be both); as I read him, he’s arguing only that given certain gendered patterns of religious conversion and practice, we should expect the Church to exhibit greater gender imbalance, were it appealing equally to men and to women.