Archive for May 10th, 2012
Men more charitable
Lately a number of comparisons have been drawn, regarding the relative generosity or compassion of specific groups: on the 21st of February we reported evidence that Christians were more generous than those without religious faiths, then on the 4th of May came the revelation that those Christians might nevertheless be less compassionate, while this Monday (May 7th) the startlingly high incidence of generosity among prison inmates hit the news.
The latest in this controversial series of reports comes from the website BiddingForGood – host to online and mobile charity auctions – which has now discovered that (in its words) “men tend to be more charitable than women”!
Around 52% of men questioned donated to charity on a weekly or monthly basis, compared to only 42% of women, and those men who did give were likely to make larger donations.
To be fair, however, BiddingForGood emphasises that “it’s not all about dollars but also about time spent”, and that “there are a significant number of women who volunteer on a regular basis instead of or in addition to making generous monetary contributions.” And of course, there could possibly be differing levels of honesty in answering such questions!
Another interesting difference between the genders that the report highlights is in the types of causes that they support. Although men and women declared “health and human services” as their top priority, animal welfare was more likely to attract female supporters, while the environment was of more concern to men. Personally, I am not really surprised by the latter (even though I tend to err towards animal welfare myself); but I do find it a little surprising that my own gender is on average the more charitable one.
All we need, now (in the same spirit as the Christian/non-Christian debate), is a comparison as to what motivates these increased levels of giving – how compassionate are men, compared to women!
