Derek Beres | Big Think
In 2006 Wired contributing editor Gary Wolf wrote a story on emerging trends in atheism. In his skeptical piece Wolf coined “new atheism,” a term later applied to the “four horsemen”: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and the late Christopher Hitchens.
These men had varying responses to the term. Harris, for one, pointed out that “atheist” never appears in the book that kicked off this movement, The End of Faith. Alas, the four horsemen are the usual go-to thinkers when considering atheism in the 21st century, which begs one important question: What about women?
In general there are more male than female atheists. One 2010 survey found that males outnumber females in confessed atheism. In the United States that equates to 6 percent of men compared to 1.2 percent of women. (The “not religious” category is closer, as it is in most nations.) In Russia the number was 6.1 to 3 percent, whereas Switzerland it was 9 to 7 percent.
