Religion, Gender And Who Americans Want As Their Boss
(ANALYSIS) One of the “evergreen” topics on social media when it comes to religion is what’s often called the Billy Graham Rule. The idea comes from the famous evangelist, who was deeply concerned with living a life beyond reproach. Graham wanted to avoid even the appearance of impropriety that could undermine his work as America’s most prominent preacher.
To that end, he adopted a personal rule that he would never spend time alone with a woman who was not his wife.
That practice likely protected Graham from rumor or innuendo about his personal conduct, but it has come under increasing criticism in recent years.
For example, on Dec. 11, 2025, former NFL player Benjamin Watson tweeted about a college head coach who “had a personal rule that he would never be alone with a woman, not even in an elevator.” That comment sparked significant backlash, particularly from women who responded by arguing that “structurally, this becomes a tremendous deficit to women.”
Of course, this debate is about more than whether men and women can share an elevator or an office. It’s really about gender dynamics in the workplace. Do men feel comfortable having a female boss? Do women want to be supervised by someone of their own sex? The answers to these questions often reflect deeper convictions about gender roles in society— views that are frequently shaped, at least in part, by religious teachings.
To explore these issues more systematically, I turned to a dataset recently posted by the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) from the Pew Research Center. The survey, fielded in July 2023, includes just over 5,000 respondents and focuses on gender and leadership. It offers unusually rich insight into how Americans think about workplace authority and who they would want as their boss.
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Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.