Why Women Hear God More Than Men Do

To pray, you need to use your imagination. And men of this generation are given few tools to do so.

Women pray more than men do. The 2008 Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found that two-thirds of all women surveyed pray daily, while less than half of all men surveyed do. The Pew survey was unusually large, accounting for over 35,000 Americans, but gender differences in prayer frequency have been found before (notably by Paloma and Gallup in 1991). In fact, the observation is so common that among evangelicals, we hear it repeated as a cliché.

Why do women pray more? Some argue it's because women are more conservative, that they stick more to tradition, while others believe it's because women feel more responsible for their families' health and well being than men do.

As an anthropologist studying religious behavior, I have a different explanation: Women pray more because women are more comfortable with their imaginations, and in order to pray, you need to use your imagination. Read more