It may(or may not) surprise you to discover that most atheists are men. According to Pew, about two-thirds of people that identify as atheist (I think that includes agnostic as well) are men and the other one-third consists of the other 71 genders. Okay, a poor joke. Of course, it’s women. Why is that? It’s a question that has been asked by a lot of different people over time and no actual consensus has ever been made. There are some ideas as to why this is true, but none that seems to satisfy those that believe in the strict equality of the sexes (or genders).

Personally, I have an idea as to why this seems to be true: women are more communal where men are more individualistic. That’s not a critique, just an observation. Atheism itself has no communal aspect to it because becoming an atheist is an individual choice that does not require any community involvement and beyond having the belief of there are no gods, there are no rules or precepts one need adopt to be an atheist. It’s all up to you how you treat others and what else you may or may not accept.

This may be why there are more women that attend church than men. At least until recently. It appears that more men are now attending religious services than women. According to Barna, in 2025, around 43% of men reported attending church weekly where only 36% of women attended weekly. What’s happened to flip that script? According to the data, men are seeking structure, purpose and yes, community in their lives. Women? It seems that women’s lives have become stretched too thin to add religious services on top of work, caregiving and life demands. Single women say they feel out-of-place in family oriented congregations.

As to atheism though, the numbers leaning more heavily toward men appears to be a scientific puzzle with no clear answer as to why more men identify as non-believers than women. It could be the way men are often secularized early in life where women ;ag a bit in that arena. But none of that tends to answer the overall question as to why.

I really believe it’s due to a lack of any kind of organization or structure within atheism. Sure, there are plenty of atheist or atheist-leaning organizations a person may become a member, but most of those don’t care about anything anyone has to say and just want your money so that they can advocate for those issues that are concerned about (I’m certainly familiar with this myself). Many of these have lapsed into not just the basic Constitutional questions over religion, but attempting to drive social policy as well. That leads to the numbers of atheists that lean left, are centrist, or lean right politically. A vast majority lean left so it’s going to be seen that the organizations representing non-believers will focus in those areas. That tends to drive a lot of people, no matter the political ideology, away.

So what do some see? A group of well known atheists trying to ram their personal ideology down the throats of every atheist and of course make it look to the general public that atheism is what these people say. This of course, is spread through the
Internet and other media and now atheists are less trusted than rapist or child molesters. How in the world did we allow that yo happen?

Maybe, just maybe if we all stood and said No to what some of the regarded atheists have to say and make sure they know as well as the public in general that these people do not represent anyone but themselves, we’d begin o see a change, overall, in the attitude of atheists and the public toward atheists.