Political Knowledge - Men vs. Women

The Guardian (of course) has a pretty neat chart up comparing the political knowledge of men vs. women.  The results are pretty weird - fascinating, yet weird.


Basically, regardless of the state of gender-equality in the country, women know less about politics than men.
It doesn't matter whether its a developing country, a developed country, Asian, European, or American, its pretty much the same.

In fact, there seems to be a correlation between increasing gender equality and greater gaps -

Professor James Curran, Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre at the University of London, was surprised to find that gaps in political knowledge are wider in countries that have done the most to promote gender equality. These gender gaps in Norway, the UK and the US are as large, or larger than gaps in South Korea and Japan

The most likely reason seems to be a male bias in media -

Professor Hayashi concludes that the main reasons for the gender gapin political knowledge are a male bias of media content, a lack of leisure time because of unpaid work in the home, and social norms and expectations which carry over from the past. He believes the under-representation of women in the news "may curb women's motivation to acquire political knowledge actively, and discourage them from political participation," and worries it could prevent women from becoming engaged citizens in a democratic society.