The gender gap in current affairs

In research described as “sure to inflame the gender wars,” a study funded by the U.K. government suggests women around the world, and especially in Canada, are significantly more ignorant of current affairs and politics than men.

The gap is constant across countries as diverse as the United States, Greece, Japan and Australia. It is, according to a report in the National Post, “as clear in Colombia, where most people scored very low on tests about current news events, as it is in Norway, where knowledge is generally high. It is as evident in the U.K. and U.S., where gender equality is well established in the culture, as it is in Japan and South Korea, where it is not.”

The cause of this purported knowledge gap is the “extraordinary question at the heart of this study,” said the lead author, James Curran, a professor of communications at University of London and director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre...