Attitudes toward women and their work roles: Effects of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientations

Sex Roles, Vol. 24, Nos. 1/2, 1991

Attitudes Toward Women and Their Work Roles:

Effects of Intrinsic and Extrinsic

Religious Orientations

Barbara H. Jones and Kathleen M c N a m a r a 1 Colorado State University

This study examined the effects of personal religious orientation, religious denomination, and gender on attitudes toward women and their work roles using a sample of 263 single undergraduate university students. Subjects with a high intrinsic religious orientation put significantly more emphasis on family than career in their anticipated general lifestyle relative to those with a low intrinsic religious orientation. Subjects with a high intrinsic religious orientation were also more likely to anticipate the female spouse spending less time in a profession during the children's early years. Males showed more traditional attitudes toward women than females, but there were no gender effects on measures of preferred general lifestyle, preferred child-care distribution, or preferred career involvement for the wife. Subjects belonging to mainline and conservative denomination did not differ significantly in their attitudes toward women or their work roles.

Religion has received relatively little attention in terms of its role as a so- ciocultural influence on women's mental health and yet it would seem to be an important variable to examine given its pervasive role in American cul- ture. Studies that have examined the relationship between religious affiliation and attitudes toward women have found that conservative religious affiliations foster traditional attitudes toward women. For instance, McMur- ray (1978) found significant differences in sex role attitudes between religious

tTo whom requests should be addressed at Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523.

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0360-0025/91/0100-0021506.50 © 1991 Plenum Publishing Corporation

22 Jones and McNamara

affiliations, and these differences remained after social characteristics and degree of religious involvement were controlled. However, the sample for this study was f rom 1964 data and therefore the findings must be considered in light of the cultural attitudes of the 1960s. In addition, McMurray used only one item to measure sex role attitude, rather than a more comprehen- sive measure, and the validity of using one item to measure a broad attitude must be questioned.

In a related study, Porter and Albert (1977) found that religious affiliation exerts a significant effect on sex role attitudes across cultures. White, urban, middle-class mothers of preschoolers in South Africa and the United States were asked five questions regarding sex role attitudes. It was found that those f rom conservative denominations had more traditional attitudes toward women than those f rom masculine denominations, even when education, country, and whether the mother worked while her children were preschool age were controlled.

In another study, Tedin (1978) found religious affiliation to be a very strong predictor of pro/ant i Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) activism, even when social class and demographic factors were controlled. Pro-ERA activists tended to be nonaffiliates or members of liberal denominations, while anti-ERA activists tended to belong to conservative or fundamentalist denominations. Religious affiliation was a stronger predictor of p ro /an t i -ERA activism than education, urban/rura l home, and family income combined.

These studies demonstrate the strength of religion as a predictor of attitudes toward women, even over other potent variables. Furthermore, these studies suggest that conservative religious affiliation foster traditional attitudes toward women; however, it must be noted that these studies are now quite dated. The importance of considering the time in which social attitudes are assessed was highlighted by McBroom (1984), who surveyed three co- horts of college students on their attitudes toward women in 1975 and 1980. It was found that all subjects showed significnatly more liberal attitudes in 1980 than five years earlier.

In a more recent study, Rhodes (1983) asked first-year college students to choose their probable future occupation f rom a list of 60 job titles previ- ously ranked f rom most masculine to least masculine on the basis of what percentage of men from a large sample chose each occupation. The difference between men and women in choosing traditionally male occupations was positively correlated with the degree to which that subject's religious denomination discriminated against women. The degree of discrimination was operationalized by the denomination's policy toward the ordination of women. This study has the advantages of being more recent and including both men and women but like earlier studies, focuses only on religious denomination as a measure of religiosity.

Religions Orientation and Women's Roles 23

Denominational affiliation is only one indicator of an individual's religiosity, and may not be the only pertinent religious variable. Allport (1966) has argued that another important indicator of religiosity is personal religious orientation, a concept that refers to the motivational basis for religious participation. Donahue (1985) and Meadow and Kahoe (1984) have stated that no approach to religiousness has made greater impact on the empirical study of religion. Allport hypothesized that there were two types of religious individuals: intrinsics, who internalized their beliefs and sought to live their lives by these precepts, and extrinsics, for whom religion is primarily a source of comfort and social convenience. This intrinsic-extrinsic (I-E) concept was used by Allport and Ross (1967) to examine the paradox that religious people were consistently found to be more prejudiced than the nonreligious, despite religious teachings on universal brotherhood. Using the Religious Orientation Scale (ROS) to operationalize the I-E concept, they found that it was not religious people in general who were more prejudiced, but only those with an extrinsic orientation to religion. Religious individuals who were highly intrinsic were less prejudiced than the nonreligious.

While Allport originally believed intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions to be strongly negatively correlated, and therefore bipolar, actual studies have found the two to be orthogonal. Thus, it is important to measure levels of each concept independently.

A few studies have examined the relationship of religiosity to attitudes toward women using the I-E dimension. Kahoe (1977) found that sexist attitudes among a sample of Baptist women were positively correlated with an intrinsic orientation to religion and McClain (1979) found that nonfeminist upperclass university women scored significantly higher on an intrinsic scale of religion than feminist women from the same sample. The attitude inven- tory used in the McClain study to measure degree of feminism was construct- ed to deal with four issues considered central to sexism: equal rights for women, the legitimation of sexual relations outside of marriage, the reduc- tion of differences in sex roles, and male chauvinism as the main source of women's difficulties. Since it is quite possible that intrinsically religious women would consider sexual relations outside of marriage as desirable for neither sex, this component of the scale could have skewed these findings. It is also possible that intrinsic women see deeper theological causes as the main source of women's difficulties (as well as men's), without denying male chauvinism as a source of women's difficulties, further skewing the findings.

Finally, Barrish and Welch (1980) found that college students' scores on a Macho Scale, designed to measure discriminatory attitudes toward women, did not vary significantly across major categories of religious affiliation, and that relationships between the Macho Scale and such factors as church attendance; belief orthodoxy, communal participation, and intrinsic religiosi-


ty were not significant. Their results led them to question whether religiosity is linked to or a cause of traditional sex role stereotyping, at least in university students. Another possible explanation is that the Macho Scale may not be an adequate measure of sex role stereotyping.

It appears to be important to examine both religious denomination and religious orientation in studies on the relationship between religiosity and attitudes toward women. It is possible that intrinsics from conservative denominations differ from mainline denomination intrinsics, since church teachings on the role of women are likely to differ by denomination. There- fore, the possible interaction between denomination and religious orientation needs to be further explored.

The present study sought to further examine the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation and religious denomination on attitudes to women and, specifically, toward women's work roles. This study employed a four- way factorial design crossing high or low endorsement of an intrinsic religious orientation with a high or low endorsement of an extrinsic religious orientation, with mainline or conservative religious denomination, and with gender. The dependent variables included the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1973), anticipated lifestyle regarding emphasis on family or career, preferred distribution of child care and discipline between husbands and wives, and preferred degree of career involvement for the female partner after marriage and children.

M E T H O D

Subjects

Two hundred sixty-three single undergraduate students (146 males, 117 females) at a midsized state university served as subjects for this study. Sub- jects were volunteers from introductory psychology classes and they received research credit for their participation. Subjects ranged in age from 17 to 42 (M = 19.57, SD = 2.37) and were predominantly freshmen.

Measures

1. A short version of the Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS: Spence et al., 1973), which consists of 25 items that highly correlate (above .95) with the full test, was used to measure the degree to which subjects hold traditional or liberal attitudes toward women. High scores indicate contemporary attitudes toward women, while low scores indicate traditional attitudes toward

Religious Orientation and Women's Roles 25

women. Items such as "Swearing and obscenity are more repulsive in the speech of a woman than a man" and "A woman should be as free as a man to propose marriage" are answered according to a Likert scale with A indicating strongly agree and D indicating strongly disagree. The short form yielded an internal consistency coefficient of .91 (Spence & Helmreich, 1972) and is essentially unifactorial and of adequate construct validity (Kilpatrick & Smith, 1974; Spence et al., 1973).

2. Anticipated General Lifestyle (AGL) was measured by asking subjects to endorse whether they anticipated their future lifestyle to emphasize family, emphasize career, or equally emphasize family and career.

3. Preferred Distribution of Child Care (PDC) was measured by asking subjects to indicate whether they expected the husband to be more responsible than the wife, the wife more responsible than the husband, or the husband and wife equally responsible for child care duties.

4. Preferred Career Invovement for the Wife (PCIW) was measured by asking subjects to endorse on a 6-point scale how much the wife would work after marriage and children. A 1 indicated no further work after marriage; 2, no further work after children unless absolutely necessary; 3, work until children born, stop working, and then resume work again as the children grow older; 4, working part time during children's early years; 5, both husband and wife working part-time during children's early years; and 6, working full time continuously after marriage and children.

5. The Religious Orientation Scale (ROS: Allport & Ross, 1967) is a 20-question Likert-type scale that assesses intrinsic and extrinsic orientations to religion. Each item is scored 1-5 with a blank item scored as 3. This measure includes such items as "I try hard to carry my religion over into all my other dealings in life" and "I pray chiefly because I have been taught to pray." High scores on the intrinsic items indicate an intrinsic orientation, and high scores on the extrinsic items indicate an extrinsic orientation. There are 9 questions for intrinsic religion with a reliability (KR 20) of .91 and 11 questions for extrinsic religion with a reliability of .85 (Spilka et al., 1977). Ad- ditional questions concerning religious denomination and degree of religiousness were asked at the end of the ROS. The intrinsic and extrinsic items on the ROS showed a nonsignificant negative correlation ( - . 0 3 and

- .02, respectively) with attitudes toward women scale revealing nonoverlap between these measures.

Procedure

The questionnaires were administered in a group setting to students volunteering to participate in a study concerning attitudes toward roles for worn-

26 Jones and MeNamara

en. Approx ima te ly half o f the subjects received the page containing the A G L , P D C , and P C I W before the A W S , and ha l f received the ques t ionnai res in the reverse order. No significant order effects were found. The ROS and ques- t ions regard ing rel igious a f f i l i a t ion and involvement were asked last so tha t they would not inf luence answers on the dependen t measures . A n o n y m i t y was assured and i n f o r m e d consent ob ta ined . Af t e r their pa r t i c ipa t ion , students were to ld tha t this was a s tudy examining the inf luence o f rel igious o r ien ta t ion on a t t i tudes t o w a r d women and their work roles. In t r ins ic and extr insic o r ien ta t ions to rel igion were expla ined, with their poss ible impl ica- t ions on a t t i tudes t o w a r d women .

R E S U L T S

O v e r a l l Te s t

A 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 (Intr insic: High, Low x Extr insic: High, Low x Religion: Mainline, Conservative x Gender: Male, Female) mult ivar ia te analysis o f var iance inc luding all dependen t var iables revealed a s ignif icant ma in effect for gender [ approx imate Pil lais F (4 , 244) = 11.38, p < .0001) and for intr insic rel igious o r i en ta t ion [ approx imate Pi l la is F (4 , 244) = 6.64, p < .0001]. Signif icant ma in effects for extr insic rel igious o r ien ta t ion or reli-

gious d e n o m i n a t i o n were no t ob ta ined , nor were there any s ignif icant inter- act ions. The means and s t a n d a r d devia t ions on all measures for males and females and high- and low-intr ins ic subjects are summar ized in Table I.

Table I. Means and Standard Deviations on Dependent Measures

Source AWS AGL PDC PCIW Gender Male

Female

Intrinsic High

Low

N 146 146 146 146 M 93.32 ~ 1.92 2.12 3.51 SD 13.35 .54 .36 .87 N 117 117 117 117 M 103.63 a 1.97 2.04 3.53 SD 11.16 .56 .28 .76

N 109 109 109 109 M 98.25 1.82" 2.05 3.28 b SD 12.83 .47 .34 .83 N 154 154 154 154 M 97.66 2.03" 2.11 3.69 b SD 13.87 .58 .31 .78

"p < .01. bp < .001.


Gender Effects

Males scored significantly lower than females on the Attitudes toward Women Scale [F(1,247) = 44.31, p < .001], but there were no significant gender differences in anticipated general lifestyle, preferred distribution of child care, or preferred career involvement pattern for the wife.

Effects of Intrinsic Religious Orientation

High intrinsics scored significantly lower than low intrinsics on anticipated general lifestyle IF(l , 247) = 9.66, p < .01] and preferred career involvement pattern for the wife [F(1,247) = 16.06, p < .001]. However, there were no significant differences on the AWS or in preferred distribution of child care between husband and wife, with both groups indicating a preference that the husband and wife be equally responsible for child care and discipline. High intrinsic subjects put more emphasis on family as op- posed to career in their anticipated general life style than did low intrinsic subjects, and endorsed the wife having less career involvement than low- intrinsic subjects, primarily during the children's early years.

DISCUSSION

The results of this study demonstrate that individuals with a high intrinsic religious orientation have more conservative attitudes toward women's work role during the years that small children are in the home and that they place significantly greater emphasis on family than career than individuals with a low intrinsic orientation to religion. There were no interactions with gender; thus high intrinsic men and women appear to be in agreement on these issues. It must be noted that although the difference was statistical- ly significant, the actual meaning of this difference may be fairly small. High intrinsics were, on the average, more likely to endorse the wife working in a profession after marriage until children were born, then devote full-time efforts to family during the children's early years and return to the profession as the children grow older. Low intrinsics were more likely to anticipate the female spouse working part time during the children's early years, return- ing to the profession full time as the children grow older.

These findings seem to suggest that individuals who indicate that their religious activity is based on internal beleifs and values rather than on social convenience or comfort are more likely to hold traditional values regarding family and the role of women in rearing young children. Without question-


ing these values themselves, it would appear that highly intrinsic religious women are willing to place themselves in the position of economic depen- dency during the years their children are very young and take the conse- quences that may occur for interrupting one's career for several years. This finding points to the need for additional research into the impact of these values on the lives of intrinsically religious women and women married to intrinsically religious men.

Interestingly, no main effects or interactions emerged with regard to extrinsic religious orientation or religious denomination. This would suggest that it is the level of internal religious beliefs and convictions, not just religious activity, that makes a difference in terms of values on family and mothers caring for young children. It is also possible that since the dependent measures used in this study were relatively global, the more subtle differences that distinguish between high and low extrinsics or between extrinsics and intrinsics were not detected. The same may be true regarding differences among religious denominations.

The failure to detect differences by religious denomination or by internal-external orientation to religion is consistent with the findings of Barrish and Welch (1980), who found that attitudes toward women did not differ significantly by denomination or religious orientation among university students. However, these findings differ from those reported by McMurry (1978), who found female college graduates with conservative religious affiliations to be significantly more traditional in their attitudes toward women. It is noteworthy that McMurray's method for classifying conservative religious affiliation was the same as used in the present study, with Baptist, Cathol- ics, and fundamentalist denominations assigned to the conservative affiliation group. Other studies (Porter & Albert, 1977; Rhodes, 1983; Tedin, 1978) have also found religious affiliation to be significantly associated with attitudes toward women, women's rights activism, and occupational choice.

The lack of distinction between conservative and mainline denominations found in the present study might be due to the particular sample used. McMurray used college seniors and graduates, whereas the present study examined predominately college freshmen. Other studies have not used college samples at all. Perhaps, over the college years, religious-spiritual development occurs that makes for clearer distinctions along the mainline- conservative continuum that are not apparent at the freshman level. Another possibility is that, as McBroom (1984) points out, research dealing with attitudes toward women and their roles needs to be updated frequently to stay abreast of changing social norms. It is possible that religious affiliation no longer plays a significant role in determining attitudes toward women, at least among university students. This may be due to such factors as renewal move- ments within many traditionally conservative churches, which creates wide


variability within religious groups. Stricter criteria may need to be used to define religious groups in order to obtain effects related to religious affiliation.

It is noteworthy that no differences were found on the AWS according to religious denominat ion or religious orientation. The expectation that extrinsic individuals or more conservative religious affiliates would reveal more traditional or sexist attitudes was not found. The finding that males hold more traditional attitudes toward women is consistent with previous research (Spence et al., 1973) and indicates that this gender effect was also true with this sample at this point in time.

This study points to the need for further investigation into the role religiosity plays in sex role behaviors and attitudes toward women. The intrinsic-extrinsic orientation to religion concept appears to be a promising one to explore in future research in this area.

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Spence, J. T., & Helmreich, R. (1972). The Attitudes Toward Women Scale: An objective in- strument to measure attitudes toward the rights and roles of women in contemporary society. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 2, 66. (Ms. No. 153).

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