A gender gap has long persisted in religious identity. Historically, data has widely, and with remarkable consistency, shown women being more religious than men. But that appears to be changing when it comes to Gen Z. 

Recent surveys indicate the longstanding gap is now closing among young men and women—and one even suggests that it might be beginning to open in the opposite direction. 

Which gender is driving the shift, and why, is a matter of some contention, however.

Recent Gallup polling attributed the narrowing gender gap among Gen Zers primarily to a rise in religiosity—meaning the depth of religious belief—among young men. But other surveys have found no such change in young men’s religious identities, and have instead shown that the change is being caused by more young women turning away from religion—a trend that some attribute to young women’s frustration with the sexism that persists in some places of worship.

TIME spoke to pollsters, political scientists, religious leaders, and others about the data and what they make of it.

Are young men becoming more religious?

Gallup polling released in April found that in 2024-2025, 42% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 said religion was “very important” to them. That figure marks a jump of 14 percentage points from just two years before, when 28% of young men said this. It also shows a reversal of past gender dynamics: in previous years, women surpassed men in saying that religion is important to them. In 2012-2013, for instance, 51% of women between the ages of 18 and 29 said so, compared to just 41% of men in that same age group. In 2024-2025, meanwhile, just 29% of young women said religion is very important in their lives, notably lower than the 42% of young men who said the same.

“Historically, there has been a gender gap in religiosity in this country as long as we’ve had survey research,” says Frank Newport, a senior scientist at Gallup who worked on the poll. “What I think is important in our findings so far is that the gender gap among young Americans—18 to 29—has basically disappeared across several measures of religiosity. Men and women are either statistically the same or, in one measure, men are more religious, among 18 to 29 year olds.”

The Gallup polling did not break the findings down by different faiths. But political scientists say that because the majority of Americans—nearly two-thirds—are Christian, it’s challenging to make nationwide conclusions on other religious traditions based on the data.

In line with the polling, multiple Christian leaders tell TIME that they’ve recently observed more young men in particular expressing an interest in religion.

“Just anecdotally, it’s something that I’ve witnessed in my role in working with young adults—that there is really a renewal that’s happening in hearts of young people, and, in particular, it seems to be something that I’ve noticed even more so for young men,” says Father Matthew Hood, chaplain for Detroit Catholic Campus Ministry and Director of Priestly Vocations for the Archdiocese of Detroit. “I’ve noticed the growth is definitely young men really seeking their faith in a new way.”

Political scientists urge caution when interpreting Gallup’s findings, noting that other polls have not observed the same drastic increase in young men’s religiosity. The Public Religion Research Institute’s (PRRI) Census of American Religion, also released in April, found that just 20% of young men went to church weekly in 2025—virtually the same figure from the year before. The Pew Research Center, meanwhile, reported in December that “there is no indication that young men are converting to Christianity in large numbers.”

Experts say that Gallup’s finding regarding young men could be a result of the metric it used to measure religiosity: Pollsters asked respondents how important religion was in their lives.

Gallup did also ask about attendance at religious services, and found that the share of young men who say they attend religious services at least once a month increased by seven percentage points in the span of two years, making them statistically tied in that metric with their female counterparts in the poll’s findings. But David Campbell, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, points out that other surveys that measure weekly attendance haven’t shown the same spike among young men.

“When you look at the more demanding aspects of religion, you don’t necessarily see this increase among young men,” Campbell says. The increase that Gallup found in young men saying religion is important, he adds, is “just an expression of an identity or of an attitude on a survey. That’s not—are you actually active in a congregation? Do you actually read scripture on a regular basis? Are you involved in the things we consider to be religious activity?”

Ryan Burge, a former pastor who is now a professor of practice at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, expresses skepticism about the Gallup poll’s finding.

“It feels like either one of two things is happening: either a lot of young men got better vibes about religion, felt more positively about religion very quickly, or it’s just a weird result for whatever reason because it’s not replicated in the other metrics about religion that you would expect [it] to be replicated in,” Burge tells TIME.

When it comes to the question of why young men might be becoming more religious—if they are—the Gallup polling indicated a partisan connection: much of the rise in religiosity it found among young men was concentrated among young Republicans. 

Campbell says there has been a “surge in Republican identity” over the past few years, adding that young men may be attracted to religion because they view it as an expression of their conservative beliefs. 

The rise of the “manosphere”—a term that refers to online content directed at boys and men and has generated controversy for spreading misogynistic views and hostile attitudes towards women—could also be a factor, says Melissa Deckman, the chief executive officer of PRRI.

Religious leaders, though, say that they haven’t seen in their own congregations that young people are more affiliated with one political party than another. They instead suggest that young men are turning toward religion as part of a broader “religious revival” in the age group—though political scientists say that this claim isn’t reflected in data collected in recent years.

Are young women becoming less religious?

Many political scientists attribute the narrowing of the gender gap in religiosity to more young women turning away from religion rather than more young men turning toward it. 

“Are young men becoming more religious, I think, is a very contested question from a data perspective,” says Burge, of Washington University in St. Louis. “There’s just too much noise in the data to have a really clear signal. There’s much more of a signal on the women’s side—like almost all those metrics are pointing to a decline in religiosity among women.”

In 2013, 29% of young women reported identifying as religiously unaffiliated, according to PRRI. That number soared to 40% in 2024, and rose again to 43% a year later. The Pew Research Center in December also attributed the closing of the gender gap to “declining religiousness among American women” rather than an increase in men’s religiosity. 

And while Gallup polling found less of a significant shift in young women’s religiosity in the most recent few years than it did among young men’s, in the longer term it appears to show an even greater change in young women’s responses. In 2012-2013, 51% of women between the ages of 18 and 29 said that religion was “very important” to them; in 2024-2025, just 29% said the same, a steep decline of 22 percentage points.

Experts offer a few possible explanations as to why young women may be leaving religion. Gina Zurlo, senior researcher and lecturer in World Christianity at the Harvard Divinity School, says one reason could be that “women are kind of fed up.”

“Women have always been, if I could say, the backbone of churches—they are the unsung laborers, they’re the behind-the-scenes people. They are the ones teaching the children, ensuring the faith [in] the next generation. They’re the administrative assistants. They’re the prayer warriors. They’re the cleaners,” Zurlo says. “These churches literally would not exist without women, and everyone knows that, even though very few … American congregations have a female pastor.”

“And I just wonder,” she continues, “if the closing of the [gender] gap is just because women are fed up—they don’t want to do this anymore.”

Deckman, of PRRI, says that there’s been a lot of focus recently on the “patriarchal religious traditions” that some churches are still promoting, such as those that emphasize “more traditional gender roles: that men should be the head of the church, [while] women should be helpers, tradwives.” 

In recent years, some church leaders have advocated for repealing the 19th Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote. The Southern Baptist Convention took steps in June to bolster its ban on women becoming pastors. And many women have shared their own experiences of sexism within the church, including the harm caused by “purity culture,” which emphasizes abstinence until marriage.

“I think that kind of perception of American religion has really been off-putting to a lot of young women today,” Deckman says. “I don’t want to suggest that every faith tradition has a patriarchal nature. But again, I think what you’re seeing in the media, especially with the rise of Christian nationalism, is a lot of attention being placed on more conservative churches.”

Jubilee Dawn Huerta, a 32-year-old content creator and podcaster, says that the sexism she experienced in her church was part of why she opted to stop going. Huerta was raised in a Christian household in San Antonio, but she says she started questioning the faith a few years ago, after she left an abusive marriage.

“Once I entered this marriage, I started to realize what was being expected of me as a Christian wife and a Christian woman,” she says. “[My ex] would do something horribly abusive, and he would call me awful names, and then he would want to have sex afterward. Then he says, ‘Well, I apologized. You need to forgive me. The Bible says that you need to forgive.’ And I didn’t really have anything to combat that because, technically, that was my belief system: that we needed to forgive.”

“It was always put back on to me that I wasn’t being godly enough, I wasn’t submitting enough,” she continues. “I was raised in this environment where if a husband and a wife disagree, the husband automatically wins.”

Experts also suggest that politics could be behind young women’s departure from religion. Many surveys show that young women are more socially progressive than their male counterparts. And so some people may be “turned off by the association of religion with conservative politics and with the Republican party,” Campbell suggests.

Burge points out that this rise in young women’s disaffiliation from religion emerged alongside the #MeToo movement and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade—both of which may have prompted some women to rethink their ties to an institution they may view as having patriarchal traditions and not supporting their reproductive freedom.

Religious leaders tell TIME that they haven’t noticed young women leaving the church. But in addition to her own experience, Huerta says this is something she has observed among her peers. She has a series on TikTok called “Why are women leaving the church?” where she reads out comments people have left on her social media posts sharing why they turned away from religion.

“A lot of it has to do with purity culture and the culture of submission and really how women in the church are made to feel less than,” Huerta says.

“I think women have been waking up to their power in a way in society and realizing that we can build lives for ourselves,” she continues. “When it comes to religion, especially in some of these more evangelical, conservative sectors, it feels like you’re being yanked back … and you are being told that you need to submit and an equal partnership isn’t necessarily encouraged.”