More atheist men than women?

[Jenny A]

I don't know why there are fewer women atheists but I can make some observations about other places I've been where women were in the extreme minority. 

After the 101 survey course, in philosophy courses, I tended to be one of only about two women per class of twenty to thirty.  There were far more women even in a military history seminar. Back then law school was about 40% female but in the corporate tax law, and small corporations problems seminars I took I was the only woman in the class.   For whatever reason the classes that featured primarily abstract reasoning tended to have fewer of us females. 

At that time there weren't many women going into the sciences or engineering either. Much less than the numbers going into the law.

And then there's the social aspect.  Classes in estate planning, and family law often had more women then men even though estate planning is largely tax and in many ways the same sort of tax as corporate tax.   Torts, criminal law, and constitutional law seemed evenly divided been the sexes.

So, I surmised that it was a combination of desire for greater social involvement and aversion to abstract thinking.

But things change.  Right now I gather there are more women going into law than men in the U.S.   And many, many women are going into the sciences.  My girls are in or have just graduated from high school and unlike in my day the AP stats, calculus, chem, and physics courses are about evenly divided between the girls and the boys.   But computer programming and CAD remain almost entirely boys' turf, though I have a daughter taking those courses.

My guess is that as more women enter the sciences, philosophy, computer programing, and engineering the numbers will even out some too. 

I'm watching two very bright girls who are friends of my kids moving inexorably from fundamentalist christian, to liberal christian, to doubting christian.   The impetus is science courses and they are very science minded girls.   College, even the christian schools they will attend, will probably make atheists of them.