Sathius005
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Women 'know less about politics.' This article was written by Sky News Australia
Women still know less about politics than men despite progress in sexual equality, academics say.
A study of 10 nations, including Australia, found an "unmistakable gender gap" even in apparently progressive richer nations.
The division was particularly stark in Britain, which was found to have the second-widest gulf in knowledge between the sexes.
An in-depth report partly blamed a lack of female faces on television news for putting women off current affairs.
Researchers from Goldsmiths, University of London, put a series of multiple choice questions to men and women in Australia, Britain, Canada, Colombia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway and the US.
British men scored an average of 5.8 correct answers out of eight on subjects such as the name of the United Nations secretary general, the national unemployment rate and what job Vladimir Putin did.
Their female counterparts got just under half (3.9) right - a gender gap second only to Norway.
Greece, South Korea and Colombia had the smallest differences.
Professor James Curran said the findings were "really very surprising".
"Our findings 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," the director of the Leverhulme Media Research Centre at Goldsmiths said.
"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.
"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."
Analysis of primetime TV news coverage found it was "heavily weighted towards male sources", with women interviewed and cited in fewer than a third (30 per cent) of news stories and more likely to be included in "soft news topics such as family, lifestyle and culture".
It said watching, reading and listening to the news was "very much a male activity".
The gaps were significantly smaller when the two groups were posed so-called "soft" questions on topics such as celebrity news, sport and scandal, the researchers said.
Women still know less about politics than men despite progress in sexual equality, academics say.
A study of 10 nations, including Australia, found an "unmistakable gender gap" even in apparently progressive richer nations.
The division was particularly stark in Britain, which was found to have the second-widest gulf in knowledge between the sexes.
An in-depth report partly blamed a lack of female faces on television news for putting women off current affairs.
Researchers from Goldsmiths, University of London, put a series of multiple choice questions to men and women in Australia, Britain, Canada, Colombia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway and the US.
British men scored an average of 5.8 correct answers out of eight on subjects such as the name of the United Nations secretary general, the national unemployment rate and what job Vladimir Putin did.
Their female counterparts got just under half (3.9) right - a gender gap second only to Norway.
Greece, South Korea and Colombia had the smallest differences.
Professor James Curran said the findings were "really very surprising".
"Our findings 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," the director of the Leverhulme Media Research Centre at Goldsmiths said.
"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.
"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."
Analysis of primetime TV news coverage found it was "heavily weighted towards male sources", with women interviewed and cited in fewer than a third (30 per cent) of news stories and more likely to be included in "soft news topics such as family, lifestyle and culture".
It said watching, reading and listening to the news was "very much a male activity".
The gaps were significantly smaller when the two groups were posed so-called "soft" questions on topics such as celebrity news, sport and scandal, the researchers said.
