Economic and Social Research Council
Women worldwide know less about politics than men
Women living in the world's most advanced democracies and under the most
progressive gender equality regimes still know less about politics than men
according to a ten-nation study of media systems and national political
knowledge funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
03 July 2013
Women living in the world’s most advanced democracies and under the most
progressive gender equality regimes still know less about politics than men.
Indeed, an unmistakable gender gap in political knowledge seems to be a
global phenomenon, according to a ten-nation study of media systems and
national political knowledge funded by the Economic and Social Research
Council
(ESRC).
Women know less about politics than men regardless of how advanced a
country is in terms of gender equality, says researcher Professor James
Curran,
Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre at University of
London. “Our finding that the gap between men and women’s knowledge of
politics is greater in Norway – a country ranked globally as one of the very
highest in terms of gender equality – than in South Korea – a country with
a much lower equality rating – is particularly striking,” Professor
Curran points out.
The study also discovered that gender gaps in political knowledge tend to
be even wider in so called ‘advanced’ economies such as the United Kingdom
and United States than in less advanced economies such as Colombia.
Professor Curran says: “The fact that throughout the whole world women know
less
about politics than men and that this is as true for people in Norway as it
is in Colombia is really very surprising”.
In this study, researchers surveyed men and women’s knowledge of domestic
and international news as well as current affairs in Australia, Canada,
Colombia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, the UK and the US. Exploring
the
reasons for the gender gap researchers examined both the content of news
and the supply of news in all ten nations. Findings reveal:
* News coverage is heavily weighted toward male sources even in
countries such as the UK and Australia where gender equality ratings are
relatively high. Overall, women are only interviewed or cited in 30 per cent
of
TV news stories in the ten nations.
* In all ten countries, female sources tend only to appear in longer
news items or articles and are preferred for soft news topics such as
family, lifestyle and culture.
"Such under-representation and topical bias of women in news media may curb
women’s motivation to acquire political knowledge actively, and discourage
them from political participation, and even prevent women from engaging in
citizens in a democratic society," suggests co-researcher Professor Kaori
Hayashi.
In terms of the supply of news, findings reveal that:
* The more national populations watch TV news, particularly news
provided by Public Service Broadcasters as opposed to commercial providers,
the better informed on politics people tend to be
* News watching/reading/listening is very much a male activity. In
Canada, Norway and the UK, men claim to be exposed to TV and newspaper news
significantly more than women. These are also the countries where political
knowledge gaps between men and women are especially large
"It seems that gaps in exposure to media are related to the gaps of
knowledge between men and women," says Professor Hayashi. The reasons why
women
watch less TV, read fewer newspapers and listen to less radio programmes in
many countries than men could include the discouragingly male bias of much
media content, less leisure time because of the greater unpaid work
undertaken by women in the home and persistent social norms and expectations
inherited from the past.
[ Or is could be / probably IS the result of innate gender self-interest.
Women are naturally drawn to the helping professions like nursing, for
example, and they clearly have a bias toward the well-being of children. There
also is such a things as status competition among women, hence the recent
finding that women react negatively to stereotypes of geeks by shunning
becoming geek-like in their computer interests. Sure, you can always find
exceptions. That's never a problem. The fact is that -generally- women
process
news differently than men because of different kinds of self-interest. BR
comment ]
"Whatever the reasons, our research shows that globally in the 21st century
those who are most likely to be knowledgeable about politics and current
affairs are older men in advanced industrial nations," Professor Curran
concludes.
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