Voices: Before we declare religion harmful to women’s health, let’s look at the evidence

A recent op-ed in The Salt Lake Tribune by Professor Susan Madsen raises important concerns about how women experience gender and authority within religious spaces. Those concerns deserve serious attention.

At the same time, when claims are made about religion’s effects on women’s health — particularly when directed at specific faith traditions — it is important that those claims reflect the full scope of the empirical evidence.

The accompanying image of General Conference suggests that the argument may be aimed, at least in part, at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and at the idea that religions that do not ordain women harm women’s health. That is a serious claim. But it is one that is not well supported by the existing research.

Our work examines religion across law, health, and human flourishing, drawing on criminal law, family law and empirical research.

First, in support of her position, Dr. Madsen relies primarily on one study, stating that “only women in gender-inclusive religious settings experience the health benefits typically associated with religious involvement. Women in sexist institutions do not — and their health is measurably worse than that of nonparticipants.”

The study itself, however, does not make that claim.

Rather, it finds “no statistically significant difference in self-rated health between non-attenders and women who attend sexist congregations,” where a “sexist congregation” is defined, among other things, as one in which women are not permitted to hold the preeminent congregational leadership role. In other words, women who attend such congregations were neither significantly healthier nor less healthy than women who did not attend religious services at all. That finding does not support the conclusion that participation in these institutions harms women’s health.

Second, the broader implication — that the health benefits of religion accrue only in congregations that ordain women — is, at the very least, open to debate.

Dr. Madsen highlights a single study, but the science on religion and health is extensive. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Health, edited by Duke University psychiatrist and public-health researcher Harold Koenig and Harvard’s Tyler VanderWeele and John Peteet, synthesizes thousands of the best and most rigorous studies across hundreds of religious traditions and social contexts — liberal and conservative, traditional and progressive. The study cited by Madsen has some strengths, but it is only one study. Taken together, the evidence from thousands of the best studies shows that religious involvement is, on balance, associated with positive outcomes for mental health, physical health and social well-being.

In-depth and systematic consideration of the best studies identified by the Duke and Harvard team reveals that significantly positive associations between religious involvement and health outcomes vastly outnumber negative ones: roughly 9-to-1 for mental health, 7-to-1 for physical health, and more than 30-to-1 for social health.

Of course, nuance matters. Sometimes one dimension of flourishing shows a statistically significant association while another does not. One of our prior works, for example, found that Latter-day Saint women report higher levels of happiness and stronger family relationships than non–Latter-day Saint women, while not reporting significantly better self-rated health. That kind of mixed pattern is common in social science and should encourage careful interpretation, not sweeping conclusions about harm.

What happens if we look directly at health outcomes by religious tradition and attendance? We did just that, using two completely independent datasets: the 2024 Cooperative Election Study, with approximately 31,000 female respondents, and the 2023–2024 Pew Religious Landscape Study, with about 20,000 female respondents. Both surveys asked women to rate their overall health, a measure shown to closely track actual health outcomes. We compared women reporting good versus less-than-good health and examined how those reports varied by weekly church attendance.

Across religious traditions, the pattern is clear. In nearly every case — and across two distinct datasets — greater religious attendance is associated with better health. This holds for traditions that ordain women, such as mainline Protestant denominations, and for those that do not, including Catholics and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Even among self-identified atheists, higher levels of religious participation are associated with better self-reported health, underscoring that the benefits of participation extend beyond belief alone.

Conversations about gender and religion matter, and we agree that practices or attitudes that undermine the dignity of women or men deserve careful examination. At the same time, people may reasonably differ in how they understand gender roles, authority and flourishing within religious communities.

Similarly, single studies conducted by persons with differing approaches or views may yield differing findings.

However, the larger empirical record offers little support for sweeping claims of harm and substantial evidence that religious participation is linked to women’s flourishing. Indeed, devotedly religious women tend to enjoy better mental health, better physical health, live significantly longer lives and enjoy better social and relational health.

As researchers of religion and faith, we would welcome more serious inquiry into how to help women remain meaningfully connected to their faith traditions. Even when broader trends point in a positive direction, individual experiences of inequity and harm remain real — and we should do all we can to address them wherever they arise.

Stephen Cranney owns a data science firm operating out of the Washington, D.C., area and is affiliated with Baylor University and Catholic University of America.

Shima Baughman is the Woodruff Deem professor of law at BYU Law School and a distinguished fellow at the Wheatley Institute.

Loren Marks is a professor in the School of Family Life at BYU. He also is a fellow at The Wheatley Institute and serves as co-director of the American Families of Faith National Research Project.

The Salt Lake Tribune is committed to creating a space where Utahns can share ideas, perspectives and solutions that move our state forward. We rely on your insight to do this. Find out how to share your opinion here, and email us at voices@sltrib.com.