Variations in Muslim Women’s Mosque Attendance by Individual and Country Characteristics: The Significance of Women’s Societal Engagement

Abstract

Women are more religious than men whether measured by religious belief, attendance, or membership, but worship attendance by gender varies across religious groups. While Christian women attend more than Christian men, Muslim women attend less than Muslim men. The worship attendance of Muslim women varies, however, across different contexts, but the reasons for this variation are yet to be understood. Using data from the 7th wave of the World Values Survey conducted in 59 countries worldwide between 2017 and 2022, as well as other cross-national data produced by the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, this article examines Muslim women’s mosque attendance cross-nationally and within countries. Findings from the quantitative analysis demonstrate that individual and structural factors which suggest social participation restrictions on women, are affecting patterns of Muslim women’s mosque attendance. Significant factors include women’s organizational membership and labor market participation, and countries’ overall gender development and gender inequality. Contrary to existing theories of secularization and gender, our findings indicate that women’s mosque attendance is likely to increase with growth in labor market participation and gender equality. This has implications for extant theories about secularization, religious participation, and gender.

Keywords

religious participation religious attendance mosques Muslim women gender equality secularization

Introduction

While religion might be losing importance in Europe (Berger, Davie, and Fokas 2008), religious beliefs and practices continue to provide significant meaning in the lives of most people in the world, including in regions such as Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America (Pew Research Center 2022). Yet, religion has an ambiguous role in relation to gender, in that it produces and cements inequalities between women and men whilst also providing resources and opportunities for participation and belonging (Avishai, Afshan, and Rinaldo 2015). At the same time, religion is not immune to broader societal changes in norms and practices relating to gender. One of the “gender conundrums” in the study of religion is that of religious participation and how it varies across faiths and social contexts.

It is well documented that women overall are more religious than men, whether examined by religious belief, attendance, or membership (Trzebiatowska and Bruce 2012). However, worship attendance by gender varies across religious groups. While Christian women attend religious services more than Christian men, the reverse is true for Muslims and Jews (Pew Research Center 2016; Sullins 2006). Over the past several decades, researchers have attempted to explain why Christian women attend religious services more often than men, and a considerable literature has emerged (e.g., Becker and Hofmeister 2001; Collett and Lizardo 2009; Miller and Stark 2002; Walter and Davie 1998). A range of factors have been put forward to explain such gender variations, including women and men’s varying attachments to the labor market, gender ideologies and socialization, personality differences, and risk aversion (see Francis and Penny 2014). For example, women’s traditional roles in the home, including caring for their families and the socialization of children, have close affinity with religion and may contribute to the gender gap in religious attendance among Christians (Day 2017; Trzebiatowska and Bruce 2012). The church attendance of Christians in post-industrialized countries is, however, generally decreasing because of a range of factors including secularization processes, increased labor market participation, and an overall rise in gender equality (Brown 2012; Inglehart and Norris 2003; Woodhead 2008). Muslim women, on the other hand, generally attend religious services in mosques less frequently than men simply because in Islam the main sermon, the weekly Friday prayer, is obligatory only for men. Beyond Friday prayer, for both Muslim women and men, a commitment to praying five times a day may involve flexible practices of praying at home, in the workplace, or anywhere one finds oneself (Esposito and Mogahed 2007: 12–13). Moreover, women are generally afforded lesser or inferior spaces in mosque than men, or even no space at all (Hammer 2012; Nyhagen 2019), which reduces women’s opportunity to congregate for communal worship outside the domestic sphere.

In this article, we focus on another phenomenon, which hitherto has attracted almost no attention from scholars: the variation in differences in attendance between Muslim men and Muslim women cross-nationally and within countries. Existing survey results show that in Muslim majority countries (countries where Muslims make up 50% or more of the population; see World Population Review 2024), men attend religious services in mosques more often than women, but the gap between the two genders varies markedly across countries that have significant Muslim populations (Alexander and Welzel 2011; Pew Research Center 2016). Although it has yet to be examined more widely in the literature, the cross-country and within-country gender gap in mosque attendance may be attributed to several factors. For example, scholars have observed that support for patriarchal values is significant in Muslim majority societies (Alexander and Welzel 2011; Inglehart and Norris 2003). Indeed, Inglehart and Norris (2003) claim that “an Islamic religious heritage is one of the most powerful barriers to the rising tide of gender equality” (p. 49; see also Norris and Inglehart 2004). In contrast, however, Spierings, Smits, and Verloo 2009: 518) find “a huge variation” in women’s labor market participation across Muslim countries and note that “Islam, democracy and gender equality are not inherently incompatible.” Furthermore, in their study, Abdelhadi and England (2019: 1530) found “no evidence that gender ideology at either the individual or country level explains the relationship between a woman’s religious affiliation and whether she is employed,” including for any women living in Muslim-dominated countries. Inglehart and Norris’ generalized representation of Islamic religious heritage as putting brakes on gender inequality is thus questionable.

While Alexander and Welzel (2011: 59) found that mosque attendance did not increase support for patriarchal values in Muslim majority countries, it is likely that an overall strong support for patriarchal values means that women aren’t specifically encouraged to attend mosque (see, e.g., Reda 2004). However, developments toward a lessening of men’s patriarchal control over women in Muslim majority contexts, including lesser social participation restrictions, might lead to an increased demand for mosque access and participation by women. Although this appears counter-intuitive from the perspective of theories that predict increasing religious disaffiliation and secularization among women who partake in the labor market (e.g., Trzebiatowska and Bruce 2012; Woodhead 2008), such theories are limited in that they focus mainly on Christianity and on institutional affiliation and membership in post-industrialized societies (Nyhagen and Halsaa 2016). For example, counting mosque attendance as an indicator of Muslim women’s religiosity is problematic when only men are required to attend weekly prayer or there is scant room for women in mosques. Contrary to dominant theories about secularization and gender in the Global North, Hussain (2008: 178) argues that “there is growing evidence to suggest that greater exposure and participation of Muslim women within the public sphere does not influence levels of religiosity nor encourage greater secularization.” Whether this is also the case in Muslim majority countries is a central question for our research.

Religious participation is a significant social phenomenon. It has, for example, been found to increase life satisfaction through fostering social bonds between people (Ellison, Gay, and Glass 1989). Studies have also shown that religiosity (as measured by religious participation) affects individuals’ attitudes, earnings, health, etc. (Iannaccone 1998). While places of worship are sites of religious devotion and prayer, they also function as community centers where people interact, and our study focuses particularly on this latter function. In many Muslim majority countries, the participation of women in public life is contested (Haddad and Esposito 1998). In addition to social and family constraints, Muslim women’s participation in public life may be restricted via laws and regulations. In environments where women’s socialization is restricted, access to and attendance at places of religious worship may also be affected.

In our study we broaden the analysis by examining the effects of both individual and structural (country-level) characteristics on women’s participation in religious services in mosques. At the individual level, we examine the effects of age, marriage, education, religiosity, and income, as well as women’s membership in voluntary organizations that are dedicated to creative arts, education, and women’s issues. We use the latter as a proxy measure of individual and household level social participation restrictions that may influence women’s mosque attendance. Such social participation restrictions may be caused by male family members exercising patriarchal control over women’s social engagements beyond the domestic sphere, and/or by whether an individual woman is an outgoing person. We hypothesize that the higher the level of organizational membership, the more women are likely to be free of individual and household level social participation restrictions and the more likely they are to attend mosque. At the broader, structural (country) level, we measure the effects of social participation restrictions on women and their mosque participation by analyzing women’s labor force participation rate and the countries’ Gender Development Index and Gender Inequality Index (see below).

Literature Review

A commonly used term for the mosque is the Arabic word Jama’a, derived from a root word meaning to gather, or gathering. People gather in mosques not only to pray (Muslims are also permitted to pray outside a mosque)—but also to connect with each other and socialize (Al-Krenawi 2016). Notably, only men have a religious duty to attend Friday prayer in the mosque and many mosques cater exclusively to men’s attendance. Scholars have argued, however, that at the time of Islam’s origin in sixth century Mecca and Medina, women and men had equal access to the mosque (Abou El Fadl 2001; Ahmed 1992; Reda 2004), and women “were actively involved in all aspects of social life and communal affairs” (Schimmel 1997: 25). Historical examples include women who have embodied religious authority within Sunni and Shia traditions, as “Companions to the Prophet, hadith transmitters and Sufi saints, [and] also as scholars, instructors, and patrons of religious endowments” (Kalmbach 2012: 15–16). Over time, an increasing dominance of patriarchal values and practices, which “are as much the product of political economy as of religion and culture” (Esposito 1998: xvi) have gradually eroded, marginalized, and excluded women from mosques and other public arenas in Muslim majority countries (Ahmed 1992; R. Hassan 1991; Kalmbach 2012; Mernissi 1991).

The contemporary picture of women’s access to and participation in mosques varies across different political and socio-geographical contexts. Societal changes that have enabled and supported women’s reclaiming of and return to mosque spaces include the rise of anti-colonial, national movements and Islamic modernism and revivalism around the world (Duval 1998; Haddad and Esposito 1998). Furthermore, “legal reforms, voting rights, and educational and employment opportunities [have] altered and broadened [Muslim] women’s role in society” (Esposito 1998: xv). Kalmbach (2012: 16–17) observes that, during “the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, female Islamic leadership has dramatically expanded,” including in mosques and madrasahs where women “teach and lead prayer for other women.” This rise in Muslim women’s religious leadership is linked with women’s increasing demands for mosque access and participation in both Muslim majority and Muslim minority contexts (see, e.g., Badran 1998; Duval 1998; Mazumdar and Mazumdar 2002). Women can pray in mosques with designated spaces for women and in mosques that are dedicated to women only and are often involved in mosque-related activities such as the celebration of religious festivities, religious teaching to women and children, social events, charitable activities, and welfare services. Women’s access to mosques has furthermore been spurred by global migration patterns where migrants settling in Muslim minority contexts including in Europe, North America and Australia have established new and purpose-built mosques with designated spaces for women (Ghafournia 2020; Hammer 2012; Predelli 2008).

Around the world, most mosque spaces are segregated by gender during prayer. It is thought that acts of prostration (a ritual lowering of the body) may compromise women’s modesty and invoke male sexual lust. A perseverance of patriarchal beliefs in male moral superiority as well as Islamic law designating child-rearing as women’s main responsibility may also function to exclude women from mosque prayer (Hammer 2012; Lehmann 2012; Mernissi 1991). The picture of women’s social conditions in Muslim majority countries is, however, complex and varied, and influenced by factors such as the traditions and rulings of different Islamic law schools, national legal and policy frameworks, varying patterns of socio-economic trajectories, and gender ideologies (Esposito 1982; Haddad 1998: 3; Mir-Hosseini 2000: 3).

While research on variations in Muslim women’s mosque attendance over time and across space is limited, available ethnographic accounts provide valuable insights into variations in practices. Ahmed (1992: 228), for example, writes that, in the context of twentieth century Egypt, some veiled Muslim women engaged in “reclaiming of the right to attend prayer in mosques,” but little is known about their “return to the mosques and their significance.” In a later study of Muslim women in the Egyptian mosque movement that emerged from the late 1970s and early 1980s, Mahmood (2005: 2) argues that this “movement marks the first time in Egyptian history that such a large number of women have held public meetings in mosques to teach one another Islamic doctrine, thereby altering the historically male-centred character of mosques as well as Islamic pedagogy.” The movement was part of a larger Islamic Revival across Muslim majority countries and led, according to Mahmood, to “a dramatic increase in attendance at mosques by both women and men” (Mahmood 2005: 3). In contrast, Roald (2001: 51–52) recounts an example where she as a researcher participated in several women’s lessons in a Salafi mosque in Jordan in 1991, but due to a sheik’s fatwa ruling the lessons were moved to private homes. Overall, the reasons and motivations for women’s mosque attendance are complex and might differ from those of men (Nyhagen 2019). In Iran, for example, women have been encouraged by a governmental literacy campaign to attend mosques to learn to read and write (Bahramitash 2003). Moreover, in Sudan, women’s mosque groups, which formed after 1989 as a result of Islamisation processes in the country, are providing Quranic and Islamic Studies lessons for women (Nageeb 2007). By claiming space in male-dominated mosques, the women’s mosque groups are challenging and transforming the ways in which mosques are gendered, argues Nageeb (2007).

While extant ethnographic studies of Muslim women’s religious practice provide detailed insights about groups of women in specific contexts, survey data suggest that between a quarter and a third of Muslim women worldwide attend mosque. These figures contrast with notions that women are excluded and absent from mosques in contemporary societies (Mazumdar and Mazumdar 2002). Based on two rounds of WVS survey data (1999–2001 and 2005–2008), Alexander and Welzel (2011: 54) found that women’s mosque attendance is significantly higher in Muslim minority countries than in Muslim majority countries, with “25 percent of Muslim women in Muslim societies say[ing] they attend the mosque more than once a week, compared to 36 percent in non-Muslim societies.” As noted above, women in Muslim minority countries in Europe, North America and elsewhere continue to increase their mosque participation, enabled by the construction of purpose-built mosques with dedicated, gender-segregated spaces for women that are typically smaller than men’s spaces (Hammer 2012; Nyhagen 2019; Predelli 2008). Muslim women are also establishing new women-focused and/or women-led mosques in both Muslim majority and Muslim minority countries. These follow in the footsteps of women-led mosques in existence for centuries among the Hui community in China (Jaschok and Jingjun 2000) and include mosques such as the Al Mujadilah Centre and Mosque for Women in Qatar (Imran 2024), the Mariam Mosque in Denmark (Petersen 2022), and the Women’s Mosque of America in the United States (Ali 2022). Regarding Muslim majority countries, Mazumdar and Mazumdar (2002: 168) argue that, while women may not necessarily attend Friday prayer at the mosque, they visit “different kinds of mosques (neighborhood, shrine and Jumma [prayer mosques] for prayer, reflection and celebration.” They also discuss examples from ethnographic research about women attending mosque in majority Muslim countries such as Iran, Egypt, Morocco and Syria, and in minority Muslim countries including China and India (Mazumdar and Mazumdar 2002: 168). Moreover, there is evidence that Muslim women’s mosque attendance in majority Muslim countries is expanding due to re-negotiations of gender relations, including examples of women’s “appropriation of mosques for learning and pedagogy” (Mazumdar and Mazumdar 2002: 174), and the accommodation of menstruating women’s participation in mosques in Iran (Kamalkhani 1993: 28, as cited in Mazumdar and Mazumdar 2002: 170). Furthermore, during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait (August 1990–February 1991), Kuwaiti women “went into the streets and mosques to do political work and moved around the city tending to the needs of the community and the nation” (Badran 1998: 195). In contemporary Egypt, “women’s desire to acquire Islamic knowledge is widespread at all levels of society,” and women can listen to the sermons of male and female preachers by attending women-only spaces in mosques (Minesaki 2012: 395). Together, the above research evidences women’s increasing mosque attendance across the world.

Data and Methods

This study uses survey data sourced from the 7th wave of the World Values Survey (WVS).¹ WVS is a standard questionnaire survey, which explores people’s values, beliefs, and norms, and their change across time and country, in successive waves of surveys since 1981. The 7th wave of the survey was conducted in 59 countries worldwide, between the years 2017 and 2022. Besides other values, WVS data consists of questions on several important aspects of people’s religious orientation, like whether they believe in God or afterlife, how much they trust people of another religion, the religious denomination they belong to, how much they trust religious clergy, the importance of religious beliefs in their lives, etc. In one of these questions, respondents were asked how often they go to mosque with answers ranging from “More than once a week” (coded as 1) to “Never” (coded as 7). In our analysis, we have reversed the order of the answers for this question for the purpose of a clearer presentation of the results. Table 1 below shows the mean attendance scores of Muslim respondents in the 7th wave of WVS by gender for each country.² As expected, in 25 out of 32 surveyed countries the mean attendance score for Muslim men is significantly higher than for women. The difference is not significant in some countries (Australia, China, Greece, Russia, Philippines, Serbia, USA) while in others (Zimbabwe and Kenya) women attend religious services more than men. Similarly, although not visible in the table, in each country, the attendance score of some women is above the average attendance score for the men who live in the same country.

Table 1.

Mean Muslim Male and Female Attendance at Religious Services in Mosques in Surveyed Countries.

Country	Mean attendance*		t-test
	Male	Female	Is the difference significant?**
All	5.209655	4.011694	M > F
Australia	3.333333	3.666667	No
Bangladesh	5.150659	4.660584	M > F
Canada	4.1	3.314286	M > F
China	4.058824	4.310345	No
Cyprus	4.489879	3.578431	M > F
Egypt	6.312812	3.655914	M > F
Ethiopia	6.504808	6.317536	M > F
Germany	3.969697	2.608696	M > F
Greece	4.142857	3	No
Indonesia	5.602752	5.369652	M > F
Iran	4.424324	4.241477	M > F
Iraq	5.065436	2.6121	M > F
Jordan	5.986532	3.089041	M > F
Kazakhstan	4.264631	4.009153	M > F
Kenya	6.582278	6.823529	M< F
Kyrgyzstan	5.023136	1.998397	M > F
Lebanon	4.279006	2.928177	M > F
Malaysia	5.529891	4.757033	M > F
Morocco	5.402044	4.474037	M > F
Myanmar	5.333333	4.590909	M > F
Nigeria	6.085911	5.831502	M > F
Pakistan	5.147233	4.565733	M > F
Philippines	6.783784	6.5	No
Russia	3.561404	3.565217	No
Serbia	5	4.833333	No
Singapore	5.527559	4.737931	M > F
Tajikistan	5.018676	2.609842	M > F
Thailand	4.76	4.3	M > F
Tunisia	4.730275	3.282051	M > F
Turkey	5.051146	3.489401	M > F
United States	4.375	4	No
Zimbabwe	5.210526	5.719101	M < F

Source: WVS wave7.

Scaled from 1 to 7 whereas higher scores indicate higher attendance.

At 5 percent significance level.

Since our focus is on women’s attendance, we took Muslim female respondents into account only and used the following two-level random slope model³ to explain inter- and intra-country differences in the attendance of Muslim women to religious services:

Y_{ij} = β_{00} + β_{10} X_{ij} + β_{01} Z_{j} + u_{ij} X_{ij} + u_{0 j} + ε_{ij}

where $Y_{ij}$ is the difference between a female Muslim respondent’s frequency of attendance to religious services in mosque and the men’s average mosque attendance in the same country (Dattendance). Dattendance takes a positive (negative) value if a female Muslim respondent’s frequency of attendance to religious services is higher (lower) than the men’s average in her country. Variables that appear on the right-hand side of the model demonstrate the factors which influence the attendance decision of a Muslim female respondent in relation to religious service in the mosque. $X_{ij}$ is a vector of individual characteristics of participant i living in country j, and Zj is a vector of country characteristics that are likely to affect a Muslim female’s attendance to religious services. The variances of u_0j and u_ij describe the variation in the intercept terms between groups and the variation in the slope terms between groups, respectively.

Informed by prior research on religious attendance, Muslim women’s religious attitudes on religious attendance, and Muslim women’s religious attitudes (e.g., Aleksynska and Chiswick 2013; Alston and McIntosh 1979; Çokgezen 2022; Gershon, Pantoja, and Taylor 2016; Iannaccone 1998; Ridge 2020; Ruiter and Tubergen 2009; Taylor 1998), the following individual and country-level variables were used in estimations.

Individual-level Variables

Age is the age of the respondent. Married, Education and Membership are dummy variables that take the value of 1 if the respondent is married, has undertaken an undergraduate or higher university degree, or is a member of a women’s group, respectively, or 0 otherwise. Income is the self-rated household income of the respondent on a 10-step scale, in which higher values refer to higher income levels. In WVS, the respondents were also asked to evaluate the importance of religion in their life on a four-point scale (1 = very important, and 4 = not at all important). In our study, we use responses to this question as a proxy for the Religiosity of the survey respondent and the order of the answers is reversed for the purpose of a clearer presentation of the results.

While these individual characteristics have frequently been used in extant studies that examine the correlates of attendance to religious services, the only consistent findings so far pertain to Age and Religiosity. Previous studies indicate that age and being religious are positively correlated with attendance to religious services in places of worship.

The primary objective of our study is to examine the impact of societal (country-level) factors affecting women’s social engagement on religious participation. However, engagement in social life is not solely influenced by societal constraints. Even in a society where women’s participation in public life is unrestricted, some women may not or cannot for personal reasons (character, psychological issues, family pressures, etc.) participate in public life, including worship in mosques. To take this effect into account, the model incorporates a variable named Membership at the individual level. It is a dummy variable which takes the value of 1 if the respondent is a member (active or inactive) of a group or organization and 0 otherwise. Here, we use this variable as a proxy measure for the level of individual and household level social participation restrictions that may influence women’s mosque attendance. We assume that being a member of a voluntary organization requires participating in activities of the organization, communicating with fellow members and non-members etc. Hence, a member of a voluntary organization is likely to have a higher societal engagement level than a non-member, probably because she is either an outgoing person and/or faces less household level social participation restrictions. We then tested the impact of Membership by using two separate variables: (a) membership of an art, music or educational organization and (b) membership of a women’s group. We thus expect a member of either of these types of collectives to be more likely to attend religious services more often than the men’s average. Moreover, we expect the correlation to be stronger for the members of a women’s group because we also assume that a member of a women’s group is more supportive of the participation of all women, including herself, in social life.

Country-level Variables

Throughout history, and in almost every society, the public sphere has overwhelmingly been dominated by men (Hagemann, Michel, and Budde 2008). Although the overall position of women in society has improved markedly in recent decades, laws and socio-cultural barriers that hinder the participation of women in public life persist in different countries and at various levels. We expect that in societies where women’s participation in the public sphere is restricted by law and/or by socio-cultural norms, women’s attendance at religious services will be low.

To measure the impact of legal and socio-cultural restrictions on women, we used three alternative indicators as a proxy for the severity of structural (society-level) barriers that hinder women’s participation in the public sphere. The first of these variables is the Labour Force Participation Rate of Women (LFPRW) in a country. We assume that the higher the participation rate of women in the labor force, the higher the participation rate of women in the public sphere and the attendance rate of women at religious services. The data is taken from World Bank-World Development Indicators.⁴ The two other indicators are The Gender Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Inequality Index (GII), both of which are indices used by the United Nations Development Programme to assess the position of women in society and introduced in 1995 and 2010 respectively. We created two dummy variables for both indices. If a country’s gender equality score is above average it took the value of 1, and 0 otherwise.⁵ Again, we expect women who are living in countries where gender equality is above average (coded as 1) to attend religious services more often than in countries where women are treated relatively unequally (coded as 0).⁶ These three are our variables of interest at macro level.

To grasp other country-level characteristics which may affect women’s frequency of attendance at religious services, we added three more variables—one economic, one political, and one cultural. Our economic variable, IncomeWB shows the income group which a respondent’s country belongs to according to World Bank classification. The World Bank assigns the world’s economies to four income groups—low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high-income countries. In our study, higher scores indicate higher income groups.⁷ Our political variable, CivilLib indicates the civil liberties score of a country. The Freedom House, a non-partisan organization based in the USA, rates people’s access to civil liberties on a 60-point scale where higher scores indicate higher civil liberties.⁸ Finally, we added a MuslimMajority dummy, which takes the value of 1 if the respondent is living in a Muslim majority country⁹ (otherwise 0), in order to investigate the impact of living in a Muslim dominated environment on women’s attendance.¹⁰

Results

Table 2 shows the summary statistics of the variables used in our study. The data consists of a total of 11,600 Muslim women respondents. As expected, on average, women’s attendance to religious services is below the average attendance of the men who are living in the same country, yet attendance varies greatly across the respondents. The mean age of the women respondents is about 38. About 70 percent of the women are married, with 23 percent having an undergraduate or higher university degree, and 17 percent being (active or inactive) members of a women’s group. Like women of other religions, the Muslim women in our sample have an above average level of religiosity and ninety percent of them live in Muslim majority countries.

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics for Muslim Women.

Variable	N	Mean	Std. Dev.	Min	Max
Dependent variable
DAttendance	11,373	−1.083302	2.155817	−5.293548	5.621324
Individual-level independent variables
Age	11,593	38.23419	13.5034	18	103
Married	11,582	0.697375	0.459414	0	1
University	11,535	0.23303	0.42278	0	1
Income	11,397	4.783978	2.104295	1	10
Religiosity	11,569	3.738698	0.592651	1	4
MemberWomen	11,335	0.173974	0.379104	0	1
MemberArt	11,347	0.1608355	0.3673953	0	1
Country-level independent variables
Income Group	11,600	2.526379	0.681302	1	4
Civil Liberty	11,600	23.21784	9.685664	9	58
Muslim Majority	11,600	0.9075	0.289743	0	1
DGI	11,600	0.322931	0.467617	0	1
GII	11,600	0.125	0.330733	0	1
WLFP	11,600	34.1944	17.36823	11	79

Table 3 presents the regression results obtained from the multilevel regression analysis. The null model (Model 0), which allows us to assess each level’s contribution to the total variance, implies that about 34 percent of the change in women’s attendance at religious services are explained by between-country differences. Model 1 displays the results of our basic model, which include individual-level explanatory variables only. Estimation results indicate that older, married, religious, wealthier Muslim women attend religious services in mosques more, while those who hold an undergraduate or higher university degree attend less. More importantly, estimates indicate that, in line with our expectations, Muslim women who are members of a women’s group attend religious services significantly more than non-members. To understand whether this positive relationship is specific to membership of a women’s group only, we estimated the same model by introducing a new variable, MemberArt, which indicates membership of an art, music or educational organization for MemberWomen (1a). The new estimate, again, demonstrates a significant positive correlation between the membership and religious attendance, but to a lesser extent than MemberWomen. These results clearly show that being a member of a women’s group or of an art, music or educational organization, which is used as proxy for “the level of societal engagement by women beyond the domestic sphere,” influences women’s attendance at religious services.

Table 3.

Multilevel Estimations for Muslim Women’s Mosque Attendance.

Variables	Dependent variable: DAttend
	(0)	(1)	(1a)	(2)	(3)	(4)
Individual level variables
Age		0.00729***(0.00139)	0.00817***(0.0014)	0.00752***(0.00136)	0.00751***(0.00138)	0.00749***(0.00138)
Married		0.152***(0.0398)	0.167***(0.0399)	0.157***(0.0396)	0.157***(0.0396)	0.157***(0.0396)
University		−0.129***(0.0466)	−0.141***(0.0469)	−0.139***(0.0464)	−0.140***(0.0464)	−0.140***(0.0464)
Income		0.0291***(0.00889)	0.0277***(0.00894)	0.0307***(0.00886)	0.0306***(0.00886)	0.0306***(0.0089)
Religiosity		0.335***(0.0348)	0.338***(0.0349)	0.347***(0.0347)	0.348***(0.0347)	0.349***(0.0347)
Member women		0.626***(0.0494)		0.659***(0.135)	0.656***(0.0136)	0.665***(0.1334)
MemberArt			0.438***(0.0504)
Country level variables
Muslim majority				−1.260***(0.462)	−1.705***(0.411)	−1.793***(0.380)
Income group				0.377(0.235)	0.145(0.260)	−0.091(0.304)
Civil liberty				−0.0209(0.0144)	−0.0226(0.0153)	−0.020(0.0150)
WLFP				0.0302***(0.011)
DGI					0.888*(0.455)
GII						1.170**(0.535)
Constant	−0.348(0.243)	−2.181***(0.285)	−2.193***(0.286)	−3.344***(0.960)	−1.581**(0.677)	−0.902(0.709)
Variances
σ²_constant	1.822	1.819	1.833	0.670	0.752	0.737
σ²_wlfp,dgi,gii				6.97e-14	3.63e-10	1.01e-13
σ²_member				0.337	0.345	0.329
σ²_i	3.491	3.380	3.408	3.345	3.345	3.345
N	11,373	10,877	10,886	10,877	10,877	10,877

Note. Standard errors in parentheses.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

To take country level factors into account we added country level variables in our basic model in the following estimations (Models 2, 3, and 4). All estimation results show that the level of income and civil liberties in a country have no impact on the mosque attendance of Muslim women. Secondly, the significant and negative sign of Muslimmajority implies that the gap between women’s and men’s attendance at religious services is larger in Muslim majority countries than in non-Muslim majority countries, which corresponds with the findings of Alexander and Welzel (2011). Finally, to understand the impact of societal participation restrictions on women’s attendance at religious services, we included three variables used as a proxy for social barriers that may hinder women’s participation in the public sphere: women’s labor force participation (LFPRW); the UN’s gender development index (GDI) and the UN’s gender inequality index (GII). In line with our expectations, all these variables have a positive sign, implying that in countries where societal participation restrictions placed on women are absent or less severe, Muslim women attend religious services in mosques more frequently.

In the second stage of our analysis, we repeated the regressions separately for Muslim majority and non-Muslim majority countries. In these estimations (Table 4), the signs and significance of individual level variables for Muslim majority countries are the same as the estimation results for the whole sample. For non-Muslim majority countries Education and Income variables are no longer significant. In non-Muslim majority countries, while Muslim women (and men) attend the mosque to pray (regardless of education and income), they also attend to support their overall Muslim minority group identity, community participation, and belonging (Gilliat Ray 2010; Hammer 2012). In contrast, education, income and labor force participation are likely to matter more for women’s mosque participation in Muslim majority countries as these factors empower women to question and overcome gender-conservative societal norms and cultural constraints (Esposito 1998). More importantly, the sign and significance of MemberWomen, which is one of the variables of main concern to us, remained the same for both country groups, implying that women whose participation in social life is less restricted by male family members attend religious services in mosques more, regardless of whether they live in a Muslim majority country or not. When it comes to country level variables, in these new estimations, the level of income and civil liberties still have no impact on mosque attendance. For the second variable of main concern to us, that of women’s labor force participation, which is used as proxy for socio-cultural barriers that may hinder women’s participation in the public sphere, we found that women’s labor force participation is significant for Muslim majority countries only, whereas the gender inequality index was found to be significant for both country groups. These results imply that a decrease in gender inequality around the world and the promotion of women’s participation in the labor force in Muslim majority countries in particular, will increase Muslim women’s participation in religious services in mosques. As we argue below, this finding disputes the applicability of extant theories of secularization and gender to Muslim majority countries.

Table 4.

Multilevel Estimations for Muslim Women’s Mosque Attendance in Muslim Majority and Non-Muslim Majority Countries.

Variables	Dependent variable: DAttend
	Muslim majority			Non-Muslim majority
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)
Individual level variables
Age	0.007*** (0.0015)	0.007*** (0.0015)	0.007*** (0.0015)	0.009** (0.004)	0.009** (0.003)	0.009** (0.0038)
Married	0.134*** (0.0423)	0.134*** (0.0423)	0.135*** (0.0423)	0.371*** (0.103)	0.367*** (0.1027)	0.371*** (0.103)
University	−0.137*** (0.0491)	−0.136*** (0.0493)	−0.137*** (0.0492)	−0.176 (0.134)	−0.181 (0.1339)	−0.173 (0.1338)
Income	0.031*** (0.009)	0.029*** (0.0094)	0.031*** (0.0094)	0.035 (0.025)	0.033 (0.0248)	0.036 (0.0248)
Religiosity	0.324*** (0.0378)	0.323*** (0.0378)	0.323*** (0.0378)	0.520*** (0.077)	0.523*** (0.0773)	0.532*** (0.0775)
MemberWomen	0.855*** (0.174)	0.855*** (0.173)	0.855*** (0.173)	0.283** (0.120)	0.284** (0.1192)	0.299** (0.1196)
Country level variables
Income group	0.428 (0.337)	0.345 (0.408)	0.222 (0.3937)	0.401 (0.322)	0.385** (0.191)	−0.411 (0.477)
Civil liberty	−0.006 (0.0269)	0.007 (0.0312)	0.013 (0.0282)	−0.028 (0.018)	−0.034** (0.0161)	−0.019 (0.017)
WLFP	0.036*** (0.0133)			0.0009 (0.022)
DGI		0.606 (0.600)			0.837** (0.426)
GII			1.278* (0.725)			1.64** (0.768)
Constant	−5.14*** (1.003)	−4.248*** (1.182)	−4.095*** (1.108)	−2.222 (1.64)	−2.638*** (0.438)	−1.057 (0.8793)
Variances
σ²_constant	0.657	0.892	0.794	0.594	3.66e-20	0.466
σ²_{wlfp,dgı,gii}	6.48e-18	1.37e-07	6.65e-12	6.95e-14	0.623	1.15e-06
σ²_member	0.400	0.399	0.399	2.81e-14	1.25e-17	3.88e-14
σ²_i	3.454	3.490	3.453	2.173	2.168	2.170
N	9,916	9,916	9,916	961	961	961

Note. Standard errors in parentheses.

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.

To ensure the robustness of our findings, we conducted an alternative estimation using a transformed version of the dependent variable. As mentioned above, mosque attendance is treated as an ordinal variable ranging from 1 (“Never”) to 7 (“More than once a week”) in our estimated model. The distance between the response categories is not uniform (a weekly mosque attendee goes about four times more often than a monthly attendee). To account for this, we assigned values to each attendance rank, which is assumed to represent the number of times a respondent attends the mosque in a year.¹¹ By using these values, we generated a new Dattendance (our dependent) variable. Re-estimating the model with this adjusted variable produced results that were substantively similar to our original findings, thus supporting the robustness of our estimations.¹²

Discussion

Our study confirms that, overall, Muslim men attend mosque more frequently than Muslim women. The overall gap in women’s and men’s attendance is larger in Muslim majority than in non-Muslim majority countries, as also found by Alexander and Welzel (2011). While our study does not directly consider the type of government (democratic/non-democratic) as a factor, our “Civil Liberty” variable does so implicitly, or at least provides an approximation of it. We found this variable to be insignificant for the overall sample as well as in separate analyses of Muslim and non-Muslim countries. That is, the level of civil liberties in a country (whether it has a Muslim majority or not), does not influence women’s participation in religious services. In this regard, Spierings et al. (2009: 517) also found “no effects of state Islam or democracy on women’s absolute LMP [labour market participation]” and they reject the “idea that Islamization is negatively related to women’s economic independence or power” (ibid.). Furthermore, in a survey interview study of 50,000 Muslims in countries with high Muslim populations, Esposito and Mogahed (2008: 47–48) concluded that Muslims show strong support for democratic values and that Muslim women “see religion as essential to progress” regarding women’s rights and societal participation. Related to this, Fox (2020: 90) has noted that it is “impossible to generalize about Muslim majority states” when it comes to governmental policies on religion.

Notably, in each country, the attendance score of some women is above the average attendance score for men in the same country. In other words, attendance varies greatly across the respondents. In Kenya and Zimbabwe, however, women report attending religious services in mosques more frequently than men. In-depth research from both countries indicates that, while Muslim women attend mosques and provide religious leadership toward women and children, they are generally excluded from mosque governance (Mwakimako 2021; Zvingowanisei 2023). Alidou (2013) shows, however, that Muslim women in Kenya have emerged as leaders within diverse socio-political milieus since the 1990s, thus supporting the notion that patriarchal social participation restrictions have lessened. Furthermore, Ndzovu’s (2019) research indicates that some Kenyan Muslim women are increasingly able to exercise religious authority, with the example of women preachers broadcasting their sermons via radio. In Zimbabwe, women’s religious leadership has been documented by Manyonganise, Chitando, and Chirongama (2023), who also note that, despite the country having “invested in women’s emancipation and leadership” more broadly (p. 3), women are still being excluded from leadership positions for patriarchal reasons (p. 5). The above evidence from Kenya and Zimbabwe does, however, indicate that patriarchal social participation restrictions might be decreasing, enabling and empowering women to increase their participation in mosques and in wider society.

Turkey provides another example of the lessening of social participation restrictions. Recent research shows that, despite all the state support given to all Islamic institutions and organizations during the twenty-year rule of the Islamist AKP Party in Turkey, there has been no change in the attendance of Muslim men to religious services. The attendance of women has, however, increased significantly (Çokgezen 2022), which may be attributed to the lifting of the headscarf ban and to the emergence of state-sponsored women preachers in mosques (M. Hassan 2012). Until 2007, women wearing headscarves were prohibited from attending school or becoming civil servants. With the lifting of the ban, headscarf-wearing Muslim women gained the right to study in schools and work in public institutions and opportunities to participate more in social life, including attendance at religious services in mosques. Muslim women are also encouraged to attend mosque via the increased presence of hundreds of state-sponsored women preachers throughout Turkey’s mosques (M. Hassan 2012). Another example of the latter is Morocco, where state trained and appointed women preachers (mūrshidahs) have supported women’s religious education since 2006. According to Rausch (2012: 70), “the extensive media coverage of mūrshidahs and their services has heightened public awareness of their availability, arousing the interest and enthusiasm of large numbers of women for their instructional sessions in many mosques and other institutions around the country.” Moreover, Rausch observes that most of the women preachers’ work takes place in mosques, where women’s presence is “not controversial or new” (Rausch 2012: 74). Further case-studies are needed on the changing landscape of women’s mosque participation (including in religious governance and leadership) in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Turkey, Morocco and beyond. The very issue of respondents’ reporting of mosque attendance also warrants further investigation, as such attendance can be motivated by different factors such as prayer, seeking religious knowledge, opportunities for socialization, etc. (Al-Krenawi 2016; Gilliat-Ray 2010; Hammer 2012; Nyhagen 2019; Predelli 2008).

While the particularities of national religious observations are of obvious importance, there is also a need to develop more rigorous cross-national perspectives to understand contiguities as well as distinctions in global faith communities. Our multilevel regression analysis shows that, in most national contexts, Muslim women who are members of women’s groups attend religious services more often than non-members. Being a member of an art, music, or educational organization also has a positive effect on women’s attendance at religious services. Furthermore, in countries where social participation restrictions on women are absent or less severe (e.g., as measured by labor force participation), Muslim women attend religious services in mosques more frequently. Women whose participation in social life is less restricted by male family members also attend mosque more, regardless of whether they live in a Muslim majority or non-Muslim majority country.

A continued decrease in gender inequality around the world, and particularly the continued entry of more women into the paid labor force in Muslim majority countries, are likely to increase Muslim women’s participation in religious services in mosques. Notably, 90 percent of the 11,600 Muslim women in our study live in Muslim majority countries including Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia, and Turkey. Muslim majority countries with Islamic regimes may restrict women’s engagement with and participation in the public sphere in different ways. For example, women may not be allowed to take formal paid work, or they may only be permitted to work in specific employment sectors such as health, medicine, and education. Others may allow women to occupy roles across different employment sectors and to stand for political election. Our study suggests that the more Muslim women are encouraged to participate in society beyond the domestic sphere, the more likely they are to attend mosque and hence also learn about Islam. This finding runs contrary to prevailing theories about secularization and gender (e.g., Inglehart and Norris 2003; Norris and Inglehart 2004; Trzebietowska and Bruce 2012) which predict that women’s increased participation in the labor market will lead to religious decline. Indeed, our analysis shows that increased social and economic emancipation increases religious engagement and participation by women in Muslim faith communities.

Conclusion

This article addresses a signally neglected issue, that of variations in Muslim women’s mosque attendance within and across countries. It applies an ambitious cross-national analysis where to date case-studies have predominated. The analysis challenges the tacit assumption that increased gender equality will reduce women’s religious engagement—an assumption derived from the historical analysis of Christian faith communities in Europe (Brown 2012; Trzebiatowska and Bruce 2012; Woodhead 2008). The challenge is to understand why this assumption does not hold for Muslim women across Muslim majority and minority communities. Our research indicates that a lessening of social participation restrictions on Muslim women leads to increased participation in mosques, especially in Muslim majority countries. A possible explanation lies in the different historical trajectories of women’s participation in mosques versus in Christian churches. Christian women have historically been encouraged to attend church as a “womanly activity” that functions as an extension of their domesticity. Since the 1960s, Christian women’s participation in the public sphere has increased, including in paid employment and politics, and they have increasingly rejected the church and religion as such (see, e.g., Brown 2012). Muslim women, on the other hand, had equal access to the mosque at the time of Islam’s origin (Ahmed 1992; Reda 2004), but have since largely been excluded from mosques and other public arenas due to patriarchal values and practices gaining ground in Muslim-majority societies (Ahmed 1992; R. Hassan 1991; Kalmbach 2012; Mernissi 1991). Women’s increasing participation in mosques means that they are entering domains of cultural and social significance which for a long time have carried masculinist connotations. Our research suggests that allowing Muslim women to socialize outside the domestic sphere, and enabling and supporting their participation in voluntary organizations, mosques and the labor market, will encourage mosque attendance and learning about Islam and contribute to overall gender equality, especially within Muslim majority societies.

Our research shows the value of extensive cross-national survey-based research on Muslim majority and minority countries, both to complement more intensive ethnographic analyses about women in mosques and to provide suggestive lines of inquiry for more detailed studies. Further research must consider the specific religious, politico-legal and socio-economic contexts for women’s access to and participation in mosques, while paying attention to multiple and diverse uses of mosques as spaces for religious communion, teaching and learning, socialization, and leisure. Importantly, our study questions the universal application of theories about secularization and gender, which hitherto have suggested that a lessening of social participation restrictions on women and increased gender equality will lead to women becoming less religious, with a decline in their religious belief, attendance, and membership (Brown 2012; Trzebiatowska and Bruce 2012; Woodhead 2008). While such theories may apply to Christianity in Europe, our research suggests that they are less valid in Muslim majority contexts. Finally, our overall findings on Muslim women’s diverse participation in public life in Muslim majority countries, via labor market participation, group membership and mosque attendance, questions Inglehart and Norris’ (2003) assumption that Islamic religious heritage is a universal barrier to gender equality.

Footnotes

Appendix

Table A1.

Sample Sizes, Muslim Women Respondents per Country.

Country	N
Australia	33
Bangladesh	549
Myanmar	22
Canada	35
China	44
Cyprus	235
Ethiopia	211
Germany	25
Greece	17
Indonesia	1,498
Iran	719
Iraq	590
Kazakhstan	477
Jordan	587
Kenya	70
Kyrgyzstan	638
Lebanon	365
Malaysia	391
Morocco	597
Nigeria	275
Pakistan	943
Philippines	40
Russia	129
Serbia	8
Singapore	146
Zimbabwe	89
Tajikistan	569
Thailand	40
Tunisia	635
Turkey	1,190
Egypt	561
United States	39
Total	11,767

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for all their constructive comments and suggestions.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethical Approval

No ethical approval was requested for the research because the data that support the findings of this study are openly available.

ORCID iD

Line Nyhagen

Data Availability Statement

The data used in this article are available at .

Notes

Author Biographies

Murat Çokgezen is Professor of Economics at Marmara University, Turkey. His research interests include economics of religion and Islamic economics.

Line Nyhagen is Professor of Sociology at Loughborough University, United Kingdom, and Adjunct Professor at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, Norway. She researches issues of religion, gender, “race,” ethnicity, and citizenship, as well as inequalities in higher education, across different religions and countries, focusing on Christianity and Islam.

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