The media environment and the gender gap in political knowledge

That women on average know less about politics than men is a robust finding over time and among countries. I lift forward previously disregarded links between societies' media environment and the aggregate gender gap in political knowledge. I focus on two general trends that I expect to affect this gap -- the increasing presence of women in the media and the move to a high-choice media environment. I expect these trends to have countervailing effects - a greater presence of women in the media leads to smaller gaps, while more choice leads to greater gaps due to differences in selective exposure. I employ a comprehensive set of political knowledge estimates from CSES and ESS, including responses to 1,164 knowledge items from about 150,000 respondents in 29 countries between 1994 and 2016. The media environment measures I use are the proportion of women present in the news about politics and government and Internet use. The results indicate that it is not only important to have female role models in politics, but it is also vital that it translates to greater visibility of women in the media sphere too. However, contrary to expectation, a greater high-choice environment, is also linked to a smaller gender gap. This article demonstrates that we need to take other macro-level indicators into account to understand how we can counter gender gaps.