THE BACHELOR REPORT

Sex of Cemetery Visitors

By Dr Philip Bachelor

Philip Bachelor has researched major community values of Australian cemeteries. His doctoral thesis explored social and cultural values of cemeteries within contexts of grief. This article is taken from one of a series in which he discusses bereavement and cemetery use.

Bereavement researchers and authors agree that significant differences are found between the sexes in their typical responses to death. While some differences appear to be based on social conditioning, including traditional cultural roles, other behavioural variations evidently stem from different developmental needs.

The sexes do not just differ biologically, but also psychologically and socially. Variation between the sexes in typical life spans may be attributed to a combination of biological, psychological and social factors.

In relation to bereavement and cemetery visitation, behavioural differences between the sexes are linked to religiosity and the psychological personality trait of tender-mindedness. Francis (1997) finds considerable evidence in western Christian culture that ‘girls and women display more signs of religiosity than boys and men’, and findings of Ata (1994) and Davies (1996) support this contention. According to Francis, ‘females are more likely to believe in God, to attend public worship and to engage in
personal prayer’. Australian Bureau of Statistics data also reveals a higher rate of religious commitment among females (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1997:2022.0).

Given that religion is a major factor in much cemetery visitation and that, even among those of no religion, tender-mindedness is still a highly feminine personality dimension, it may be expected that cemetery visitation would be found to be a more highly feminine activity.

The National Cemetery Visitation Study (Bachelor 1998) confirmed that many more females than males do visit cemeteries, as shown in Figure 1. The Australian population was identified in the 1996 census as almost 50.5% female and 49.5% male (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1997: 2015.0), while Australian cemetery
visitors were found to be 64.3% female and 35.7% male (Bachelor 1998). Visits by females were also found to be of significantly greater duration than were those of males.

Factors relating to the number of female visitors include their concentration among the higher age brackets, as more women outlive their partners, and the higher incidence of visits among older people. But even more significant is the evident greater devotion among women to tending the graves or memorials of significant decedents.

No significant variation is evident between the sexes from the general pattern of decline in visitation over years since death, as shown in Figure 2. Similarly, no significant variation appears in the frequency of visits, as shown in Figure 3.

To enable direct comparison between the specific frequencies for each sex, proportions expressed in Figures 2 and 3 are of the respective sex, rather than of total visitors.

Fig 1 Sex of the Australian population and cemetery visitors	Fig 2 Years since death by sex of the visitor	Fig 3 Frequency of visits by sex of the visitor

The life expectancy of Australian males is around seventy-six years, while for females it is around eighty-two years (Australian Bureau of Statistics (2000: 3302.0), suggesting that the average Australian female outlives her male counterpart by six years. However, when a further three years difference in the mean age at marriage is added to the average difference in lifespan, then a typical married woman may expect to be widowed for approximately nine years.

The similarity of a high proportion of weekly visits by both sexes is indicative of couples or families visiting the cemetery in association with church attendance. The similarity of a high proportion of visits a few times per year (2-11) is indicative of couples visiting graves or memorials on popular anniversaries.

Across diverse sociocultural backgrounds, a person’s sex is
evidently a significant determinant of whether or not they will visit the cemetery, and if so, for how long. However, the data indicate that there exists no significant difference in either frequency or the general visitation trajectory between the sexes.

Naturalistic observations of visits to several specific compartments at Fawkner Crematorium & Memorial Park (Bachelor 2001) revealed the mean duration of female visits to be greater than that of male visits in all compartments. To all compartments combined, mean visits by females were found to be 49.5% longer than mean visits by males (ie. 27.2 and 18.2 minutes respectively).

Quantitative data (Bachelor 1998) confirm observations that many more females visit cemeteries than do males. Qualitative data (Bachelor 2001) indicate that females are more likely than males to bring and place flowers on a grave or memorial, socially interact with other visitors, visit their children’s graves, tend graves other than of their own family, and express emotions, including crying, at the gravesite. Female informants were also found more likely than males to seek counselling and to use antidepressant drugs towards suppressing emotions of grief, while male informants were generally found to be more inclined towards
stoicism and pragmatism.

References

• Ata, A. W. (1994) Bereavement & health in Australia: Gender, psychological, religious and cross-cultural issues, David Lovell, Melbourne.
• Australian Bureau of Statistics (2000) Deaths Australia 1999, Cat. No. 3302.0, ABS, Canberra.
• Bachelor, P. (1998) ‘Cemetery Visitors in Australia’, Conference papers and reports, Eleventh National Conference of the Australian Cemeteries & Crematoria Association, Alice Springs, 30 August–3 September.
• Bachelor, P. (2001) Cemetery visitation: The place of the cemetery in the grief process, unpublished PhD thesis, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga.
• Davies, D. J. (1996) ‘British attitudes towards reusing old graves’, Conference papers & reports, Proceedings of the Australian Cemeteries & Crematoria Association and International Cremation Federation, International Conference, Adelaide, 13-17 October.
• Eysenck, H. J. & Eysenck, M. W. (1985) Personality and individual differences: A natural science approach, Plenum, New York.
• Francis, L. J. (1997) ‘Psychology of religion’ in The Penguin dictionary of religions, ed. Hinnells, J. R., Penguin, London.
• Osterweis, M., Solomon, F., & Green, M. [eds.] (1984) Bereavement: Reactions, consequences, and care, National Academy Press, Washington, DC.
• Parkes, C. M. (1996) Bereavement: Studies of grief in adult life (edn. 3), Penguin, London.
• Rando, T. A. (1993) Treatment of complicated mourning, Research Press, Champaign, Illinois.
• Raphael, B. (1984) The anatomy of bereavement: A handbook for the caring professions, Routledge, London.
• Sanders, C. M. (1989) Grief: The mourning after, dealing with adult bereavement, Wiley Interscience, New York.
• Stroebe, M. S., Stroebe, W. & Hansson, R. O. [eds.] (1993) Handbook of bereavement: Theory, research, and intervention, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Worden, J. W. (1991) Grief counselling and grief therapy: A handbook for the mental health practitioner (edn. 2) Routledge, London.