The news comes from Barna who says the findings reverse a longstanding trend.

Women had outpaced men in attendance since 2000, then at 47 percent to 38 percent, before men began outpacing women in 2022, at 35 percent to 30 percent. In 2024, 30 percent of men were attending weekly, compared to 27 percent of women.

Several reasons could be driving the gender flip in attendance, but researchers cited none as definitive to any degree. Among them:

  • — Women are overwhelmingly responsible for homecare and childcare and increasingly work in the marketplace because of a rising cost of living.
  • — “More women are single today than ever before and many feel discouraged by the dating pool at church, as church attendees are more often married than not.”
  • — Researchers also pointed to the lingering trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic and its shift on remote engagement in church and work.
  • — and “A troubling number of Christian ministry leaders have publicly and egregiously fallen to sexual sin, which tends to make women in particular feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. These hurtful experiences cause great dissonance for women.”

The gender flip in attendance was among five top trends Barna announced in its State of the Church report released earlier this month.