A response to Gray's critique of Hope and Stover's original paper "Monotheism and gender status: a cross-societal study" (1984). The authors address questions regarding their methods. They also counter the suggestion that social complexity acts as an overriding variable to explain the relationship originally found between gender status and religious belief.

The main premise of the present study is to investigate the relationship between monotheism and dependence nurturance during early childhood and adulthood. Terry notes the human need to explain and understand the world, and theorizes that this understanding derives from personal experience, learned information, and supernatural explanation. Terry tests the hypothesis that supernatural explanations (monothestic beliefs) will be formulated if individuals cannot depend on their own experiences and/or others to reduce uncertainty (a result of independence training).

This article introduces an index containing information that is accessible, applicable to many societies, and pertinent to male/female differences associated with various aspects of life. While hypotheses are not formally presented, the names of the cultures in the index are specified as is an example of the type of status analyses that the index can be used for.

This book investigates the origins of supernatural and religious beliefs. The author tests associations between various types of beliefs (e.g. witchcraft, monotheism) and various societal characteristics (e.g. mobility, class stratification). Many hypotheses are supported. Theoretical discussion is included, and the author posits that “the belief in a particular kind of spirit springs from experiences with a type of persisting sovereign group whose area of jurisdiction corresponds to that attributed to the spirit” (175).

This study discusses childcare done by children. While no empirical hypotheses are tested, the authors identify some potential sociocultural and developmental correlates of childcare by children and provide relevant descriptive statistics. Possible correlates include mother-child relationships, conceptions and emergence of childhood stages, organization of play groups, development of social responsibility, sex differences, personality development, cognitive style and cognitive development, motivation and learning.

This dissertation discusses the divided theoretical approach to how reincarnation, animism, spirits, and general religious beliefs occur within societies cross-culturally. Matlock offers evidence to support Tyler, contradicting the generally accepted Durkheimian approach, arguing that the belief about souls and spirits may originate in dreams and other empirical experiences, in turn informing and shaping social organization. Durkheim argued the opposite, claiming that religious beliefs reflect social organization such as the clan and kinship. The author states 33 quantitative hypotheses to be tested using 30 of the first 60 sample societies available in the HRAF Probability Sample.

This article offers a critique of Stover and Hope (1984). Gray challenges their findings and suggests that a third variable, sovereign groups, explains the correlation between monotheism and gender status.

This article develops a new measure of religious evolution and uses multivariate statistical techniques to examine correlates of different religious stages. Results suggest that subsistence economy, societal size, and the presence of writing and records are all associated with the evolution toward monotheism.

This article tests three types of theories of gender inequality in preindustrial societies. Bivariate and multivariate analyses suggest little support for militarist theories, moderate support for Marxian theories, and strong support for non-Marxian theories.

This book provides a summary of data available in the Ethnographic Atlas. Social, political, economic, and kinship variables are included, as well as information about religious beliefs, social restrictions, and games. Data is divided into world areas for the purposes of regional comparison.