Professor James Curran. Pic: Goldsmiths
Women living in the most advanced democracies still know less about politics than men, according to a new research study led by academics at Goldsmiths in New Cross.
The content and supply of news across ten nations was examined to explore the reasons for this gender gap by researchers from the Leverhulme Media Research Centre, based in the Department of Media and Communications.
The study, lead by Professor James Curran, director of the centre, compared knowledge of domestic and international news, as well as current affairs, between men and woman from Australia, Canada, Colombia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, the UK and the US; countries, from four continents, deliberately chosen for their differences.
Curran said: “What is particularly striking about our findings is 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.”
The study also revealed that gender gaps in political knowledge are even wider in so called ‘advanced’ economies such as the United Kingdom and United States than in less advanced economies such as Colombia. This is due to the fact that news coverage is weighted toward male sources even in countries like the UK and Australia.
Overall, women are only interviewed or cited in 30 percent of TV news stories in the nations selected for study. 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.
Curran added: “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.”
Curran told ELL “The world of public affairs, covered by daily TV broadcasts, is indeed male dominated. The bigger argument, the hanger from the past, is that ‘the angel in the home’ has left a lasting impression around the world. The world of politics continues to be unequal, for example: 23 per cent of MPs are women and only 1 in 11 are Supreme Court Justices. Rather surprisingly, only 3 out of 100 top FTSE companies have female chief executives.
“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.”
Co-researcher, Professor Kaori Hayashi, from the University of Tokyo added: “The reasons why women watch less TV, read fewer newspapers and listen to less radio programmes could include the discouragingly male bias of 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.”
Media System, Political Context and Informed Citizenship: A Comparative Study’, was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
