ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the macro effects of the proportion of religious adherents in a country on two country-level indicators of material gender outcomes: the United Nations Gender Inequality Index and the Social Watch Gender Equity Index. Macro forces of overall material gender equality in a country influence micro gender relations and individual attitudes and practices. Because of the association between having formerly been a communist country and proportion of the population that is non-religious, a binary measure was created to control for a nation being post-communist. The proportion of non-religious people in a country has a substantial and persistent empowering effect for women. Though some of the religious adherents' effect can be explained by human development, a strong effect toward equality persists when there are more non-religious people in a country, and there is also a small effect toward inequality when there are more Muslims. The chapter explores the relationship between religion and country-level gender outcomes.
