Gender and Marital Decision Making: Negotiating Religious Ideology and Practice

This article uses quantitative data from the 1996 Religious Identity and Influence Survey to examine the relationship between religious identity, gender ideology, and marital decision making. The focus is on variation across religious groups in beliefs about the husband as the head of the family and reported patterns of marital decision making. While conservative Protestants espouse a traditional gender-role ideology, their marital decision-making practices are not significantly different from those of other religious groups. On the other hand, theologically liberal Protestants have more egalitarian ideology while reporting decision-making practices that are not significantly more egalitarian than those of conservative Protestants. The findings suggest that ideology should not be equated with practice without taking into consideration the broader context and subcultural meanings of the beliefs in question.