Why women make way less than men do in more religious places

By Stephanie Pappas

   Why is there a persistent wage gap between men and women? Turns out, religion may play a big role in the disparity.

   New research finds that the wage gap is 8 percentage points wider in the five most religious states than in the five most secular, with women making 18% less than men in the least religious states and 26% less in the most religious. What's more, the gender gap is projected to vanish in 28 years in the most secular states, compared with a stunning 109 years in the most religious. "If they're in a religious community, our children are not going to know a world in which they're paid equitably," said Traci Sitzmann, an associate professor of management at the University of Colorado, Denver. "It's a little bit scary." 

Religion and wages

  Sitzmann and her colleague Elizabeth Campbell, an assistant professor of work and organizations at the University of Minnesota, were interested in exploring the impacts of religiosity on workforce issues. They started with a global view. Using data from 140 countries, they compared the likelihood of citizens answering "yes" to the question, "Is religion important in your daily life?" with the gender wage gap in those countries as of 2013, the most recent global data available. They found a striking association: The more religious a country, the greater the wage gap. In nations where more than 95% or more people said religion was important in their daily lives, such as Pakistan and the Philippines, women earned around 46% as much as men.

   In countries where fewer than 20% of people said religion was important to them in daily life, such as Sweden and Estonia, women averaged around 75% of men's wages. The United States had moderately high religiosity and women in the U.S. earned 66 cents for every dollar men earned, Sitzmann told Live Science.

  The effect held true for all major world religions, Sitzmann said. It didn't matter if most believers in a country were Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or adherants to a folk religion. The wage gap was still greater in countries where religion played a major role in daily life.

   The researchers then turned to Gallup survey data on religious service attendance and the importance of religion in daily life in the 50 U.S. states. In the U.S. data, the researchers looked only at full-time wages so as not to skew the results due to women working fewer hours.

   They again found that the more religious the state, the greater the wage gap. (Mississippi, Alabama, Utah, South Dakota and South Carolina were the most religious states; Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Nevada were the least.) The researchers found that religiosity explained 17% of the variability in the gender wage gap between states. To ensure that the wider economy or levels of conservatism weren’t responsible for the difference, the researchers then looked at year-over-year data between 2008 and 2018 and found that the association between religion and wages still held. The gender gap is shrinking over time in the U.S., they found, but it is shrinking faster in secular states compared with religious ones. At current rates, it will take more than a century for the gap to close in the most religious states.

   According to the workplace data analysis company PayScale, women make 81 cents for every dollar men make as of 2020. This analysis compares median salaries for men and women, and does not control for factors like seniority, years experience and education, all of which can be impacted by gender discrimination and gender role expectations.

The pathway to a wage gap

   Sitzmann and Campbell found three reasons for this difference in wages between secular and religious regions. The more religious a country or state, the more that society differentiated the roles of men and women. In other words, women in more religious societies are expected to put family first. The researchers measured this by looking at how many babies women have, how many women work at all, access to abortion and family-friendly work policies. In more religious societies, women have more children, participate less in the workforce, have less access both to abortion and to policies that help balance work with family. 

  Religious societies are also more likely to sexually objectify women, the researchers found. They measured this by looking at regional Google Trends for the search terms "pornography" and "rape." Both were correlated with religiosity, and both were correlated with the gender wage gap.

   Finally, religious societies are also less likely to promote or accept women in leadership positions. "We've got the Pope saying, 'the door is closed, women are not allowed to be leaders in the church,'" Sitzmann said, referring to Pope Francis' 2013 statement on female priests in the Catholic Church. "That sets the stage for a very strong norm."

   She and Campbell found that in more religious societies, women have less representation in politics and in organizational leadership. They also have lower educational attainment and less legal equality.

Closing the gap

  Finally, the researchers conducted experiments to confirm that it was indeed religion, and not some closely related concept like conservatism, that explained the results. They set up an online game in which 91 participants, about half women and half men, acted as managers who had to allocate wages to employees based on performance reviews. All of the participants saw the same performance reviews, but in some cases the employee was named Patricia Anderson and in others was called Michael Taylor.

   Before seeing the performance reviews, some participants saw a description of the mock company they were working for that described it as faith-based. Others saw a description that focused on the company's dedication to communication and community.

   Those who were primed to believe they were working for a religious company allocated 3% more to the male employee compared with the female employee. In contrast, those who thought the organization was secular allocated 6% more to the female employee.

   But there was a way to reverse the inequality. When the researchers told people in the mock religious company that one of the company values was that women needed to be involved, and that the company had a strict anti-sexual-harassment policy, it wiped out the gender wage gap, according to their research paper published Oct. 27 in the Academy of Management Journal.

   This was a heartening result, Sitzmann said, because it suggests that simply being aware of expectations for gender equality will help make people behave more equitably. 

Adapted from: https://www.livescience.com/religious-states-wider-gender-pay-gap.html

Dutch government bans phones in schools The Dutch government has announced a ban ______01 mobile phones, tablets, and smartwatches in classrooms starting ______02 January 1, 2024.

The aim is to reduce distractions ______03 lessons and promote better concentration and studying opportunities for students. ______04, devices

_______________05 if they are specifically required for digital skills lessons, for medical reasons, or students with disabilities.

Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf ______06 that ______07 mobile phones are a significant part of ______08 lives, they are not suitable for the classroom, and scientific research ______09 this view.

The ban is the result of an agreement between the ministry, schools, and related organizations. Schools have the flexibility to implement the ban in their way, but if the desired outcomes ______10 achieved by the summer of 2024, legal rules ______11 enforced.

Source: https://www.newsinlevels.com/products/dutch government-bans-phones-in-schools-level-3/. 

Dutch government bans phones in schools The Dutch government has announced a ban ______01 mobile phones, tablets, and smartwatches in classrooms starting ______02 January 1, 2024.

The aim is to reduce distractions ______03 lessons and promote better concentration and studying opportunities for students. ______04, devices

_______________05 if they are specifically required for digital skills lessons, for medical reasons, or students with disabilities.

Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf ______06 that ______07 mobile phones are a significant part of ______08 lives, they are not suitable for the classroom, and scientific research ______09 this view.

The ban is the result of an agreement between the ministry, schools, and related organizations. Schools have the flexibility to implement the ban in their way, but if the desired outcomes ______10 achieved by the summer of 2024, legal rules ______11 enforced.

Source: https://www.newsinlevels.com/products/dutch government-bans-phones-in-schools-level-3/. 

Dutch government bans phones in schools The Dutch government has announced a ban ______01 mobile phones, tablets, and smartwatches in classrooms starting ______02 January 1, 2024.

The aim is to reduce distractions ______03 lessons and promote better concentration and studying opportunities for students. ______04, devices

_______________05 if they are specifically required for digital skills lessons, for medical reasons, or students with disabilities.

Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf ______06 that ______07 mobile phones are a significant part of ______08 lives, they are not suitable for the classroom, and scientific research ______09 this view.

The ban is the result of an agreement between the ministry, schools, and related organizations. Schools have the flexibility to implement the ban in their way, but if the desired outcomes ______10 achieved by the summer of 2024, legal rules ______11 enforced.

Source: https://www.newsinlevels.com/products/dutch government-bans-phones-in-schools-level-3/. 

Based on the text below, answer the question.

TEXT III

The English schools looking to dispel ‘doom and gloom' around Al

Charles Darwin chatting with students about evolution, primary school pupils seeing their writing transformed into images, Luton reimagined as a cool automobile - artificial intelligence is invading schools across England in surprising ways.

While Bridget Philipson, the education secretary, in January called for a “digital revolution” involving Al in schools, it has already begun in places such as Willowdown primary school in Bridgwater, Somerset.

Matt Cave, Willowdown's head teacher, said his pupils improve their descriptive writing by feeding their work into an Al client to generate images.

“All of a sudden they've got all these pictures from different people’s descriptions, and they can then discuss with their classmates whether that was the image they expected to be in the reader’s head,” Cave said.

“It was really stimulating and thought-provoking for them to have a different audience.” The results, according to Cave, have been "brilliant” and a contrast to the “doom and gloom” he had heard from worried school leaders.

“I wouldn't want anyone to think we weren't aware of the potential hazards - we emphasise that to the children continually. But it's going to be a tool that they are going to need to use all their lives,” Cave said.

Marina Wyatt, head of science for key stage 3 at Furze Platt senior school in Maidenhead, said that she has found teacher-led use of Al useful for engaging students in discussions, including with a virtual Charles Darwin.

In the prompt we tell it to respond as Charles Darwin, and stay in the role. And it works. It came up with some brilliant stuff.

Adapted from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/mar/06/theenglish-schools-looking-to-dispel-doom-and-gloom-around-ai

Based on the text below, answer the question.

TEXT II

Impact over income: a striking number of gen Zers are becoming teachers

Joseph Curatolo was studying architecture four years ago when he took a summer job, teaching music to middle school students. When he told them he might leave the program to focus on his studies, he said, they burst into tears.

“The fact that I had such an impact on these kids led me to reconsider my career,” said Curatolo, 22. He is now a seventh-and eighth-grade social studies teacher, based in New York City.

Amid a nationwide decline of teaching, Curatolo is not alone: a striking number of gen Z graduates are entering the classroom, despite longstanding concerns over pay and conditions.

Teach For America (TFA), a non-profit education organization, experienced a near 43% increase in its teaching fellows - which TFA refers to as corp members - over the past three years. A generation whose formative years were spent in isolation during the Covid-19 lockdown is “craving human connection and experiences that feel real’, suggested Whitney Petersmeyer, TFA's chief growth and program officer.

Gen Z is “responding to the opportunity for purpose and responsibility at a time where many entry jobs feel uncertain or disconnected from impact’, she added. During periods of economic uncertainty and turbulence, college graduates have been known to turn to industries fields with major shortages, like education.

This generation came of age “in a rapidly changing world,” Randi Weingarten, president of American Teachers Federation, said in a statement, “and that lived experience helps them relate to students in powerful ways.” New arrivals in the classroom are bringing a new perspective, according to Weingarten. “They're reimagining how we teach, bringing new approaches to technology and social-emotional learning.”

Adapted from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/janf02/gen-z-teachers-profession