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This is a question I've asked on a few forums on varied boards including philosophy and sociology.
I love studying and observing societies and people. And after much travelling and observing I feel like 7 out of 10 people who are vegetarians are women. Regardless of religion, location or race.
Why do you think this is so? I also notice that animal rights are far higher on the list of issues for women than it is for men. Heck, I'd volunteer in Canada in animal shelters and it was overwhelmingly women everywhere.
I haven't looked around but even on this forum I bet it is overwhelmingly women.
Is it psychological? Women generally are more compassionate or is it biology: men need more proteins and power.
Edit: in the similar questions recommendations at the bottom of the page there's a similar question and guess who the enquirer was *wink*.
Woman generally are more apt to follow trends. Being a vegetarian is currently all the rage, that would explain the current rise in vegetarians, with the majority being woman. Like you, the only vegetarians I know are female or gay males.
Why do vegetarians show higher urban residence levels than the average population? Who knows.
why more in urban areas??
the more rural you are, the more you are in farm country and that's also where people hunt
if you grow up hunting, or on a farm, you aren't so squeamish and ewwww & ickkk "
my grandmother use to kill her own chicken for sunday dinner....as did her mother and generations before
it wasn't "gross" it was a way of life
the modern day supermarket is a modern marvel...
foods from all over the world,,, at our disposal
in an urban city setting if you have decent income, or dual incomes,,, you can pick and choose whatever you want to eat,,,doesn't matter whats "in season: for crops or game
we are very very fortunate,,, thru human history,,,,hunting and gathering has been the number one concern for us to be fed, and feed our family,,,many have starved to death,,
no worries today in fact, we are sooooo spoiled on whats available for food, that we can pick and choose whatever we want to eat..
im from a rural state , I grew up with most of my family hunting,,,it wasn't uncommon to see a deer cut up in the garage ,
my friends that lived on a farm had cows and goats, and chickens and pigs,, and it was common to see them slaughtered too- farm living
so, to be able to pick and choose whatever you want to eat,,,,is an unbelievable luxury compared to human history
Vegetarianism in principally driven by the incidence of a caring behavior, in that case, caring for animals. The prevalence of caring behaviors has a gender-related bias in society. At least in part, this is biological:
Quote:
Female mice in the laboratory normally exhibit what one might consider classic motherly behaviors—mating with male mice and nurturing their young. But female mice with a genetic trait making them unable to sense the hormone estrogen lose their interest in sex and spend less time caring for their offspring.
Fortified by testosterone, male mice in the laboratory display behaviors tending toward the aggressive. They will fight with each other, try to mount female mice and mark their territory with urine. Deprived of testosterone, however, castrated male mice no longer behave so aggressively.
Vegetarian is a trend? Seems like more people are going paleo than vegetarian nowadays.
FWIW, I only know 4 or 5 vegetarians in real life... 2 of them are [straight] men.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ankhharu
Woman generally are more apt to follow trends. Being a vegetarian is currently all the rage, that would explain the current rise in vegetarians, with the majority being woman. Like you, the only vegetarians I know are female or gay males.
OP: I think vegetarianism is more common with women because it's fairly common for women (particularly teens) to go veg to lose weight, while men who go veg tend to do so for reasons on conscience or personal preference. Not to say that women don't go veg for reasons of conscience too, but that it's more common for women to use it as a weight loss method than men. Personally, even after being raised in the country, hunting, fishing, raising chickens etc, eating meat simply doesn't appeal to me. It's not a matter of conscience or because I think eating meat is cruel... I just really don't like it.
Last edited by Ginge McFantaPants; 01-22-2015 at 06:56 PM..
This is exactly what I mean. "Steaks, and getting fussy about them" is strongly coded as masculine in this society, and this is normalized and perpetuated by people like bg7 here, so if a man does not want to eat a big piece of beef (or even wants it fully cooked), there is the sometimes-implicit often-explicit pressure to be otherwise.
This is the gender binary at work (and don't get me wrong, women have it a lot worse).
Even factoring in all such religious groups and other equivocations regarding the gender of vegetarians, there are still substantially more women (7%) than men (4%) who are vegetarians.
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