Twenty Years After Houtman and Aupers: Gender and Post‐Christian Spirituality Revisited. A Cross‐National Test of the “Gender Puzzle” Using the ISSP (28 Western Countries, 2008–2018)

ABSTRACT This study revisits Houtman and Aupers's influential explanation of the “gender puzzle” in new spirituality. We test their proposed mechanism—the stronger association between detraditionalizing values, such as the rejection of traditional gender roles, and post‐Christian spirituality among women—using a dataset that doubles the number of countries examined in the original study, draws on more recent survey data (ISSP, waves 2008–2018), and employs an expanded measurement of post‐Christian spirituality. The gendered detraditionalization mechanism remains robust across most contexts. Yet the overall gender gap proves far less universal: It is modest, smaller than gaps in spiritual practices, and in several Catholic, post‐communist, and especially Orthodox societies even absent or reversed. These patterns suggest that spiritual individualization may unfold through hybrid forms blending alternative spirituality with traditional religiosity, and they highlight the need to integrate structural accounts with supply‐side dynamics in explaining the feminization of spirituality.