The Influence of Religiosity and Fundamentalism on White Protestants' Attitudes Toward Women's Issues

• Main Author: Foster, Ashley
• Format: Others
• Published: TopSCHOLAR® 2002
• Subjects: Gender and Sexuality; Sociology
• Online Access: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/657; http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1660&context=theses

This study examines factors of religiosity and fundamentalism that lead to sexist attitudes toward various women's issues. Analysis of data from the 1996 General Social Survey was implemented to ascertain the dependent variables: the Attitude toward Abortion Scale, the Women in Politics Scale, the Familial Roles Scale, the Attitude toward the Women's Movement Scale, Biology as a Reason for Women Taking Care of Children, God's Will as a Reason for Women Taking Care of Children, Importance of Women's Issues and Self-report Being Feminist. The correlations and regressions between measures of religiosity (church attendance and strength of affiliation) and attitudes toward women's issues, as well as between the measures of fundamentalism (Biblical interpretation, NORC determined level of fundamentalism, and self-report being fundamentalist) and attitudes toward women's issues were included. Biblical interpretation and gender were the two most often correlated variables. A multidimensional model was used to create a theoretical framework, and an extensive review of the literature was included.