As shown in the table above, men have paid much more attention to news about the US military, international politics, the economy and sports. Women have paid relatively more attention to news about disasters, court rulings, crime and celebrity scandal. For the past five years, the Center has tested the knowledge of representative samples of the American public with a total of 172 questions about news events and people in the news. Our research since that writing has only served to confirm these conclusions. This discrepancy was in fact part of a clear pattern.
Men consistently know more about a wide range of issues than women.
This is the case for domestic policy questions and questions about people in the news, but the gender gap is even wider for international news. Only on the subject of entertainment is there no information gap between men and women. Regarding news about women and women's issues, there are virtually no sex differences in knowledge among men and women under age 30. However, women over 30 are slightly less informed about women newsmakers and stories about women than are their male counterparts. Education does little to mitigate the differences in levels of knowledge between women and men.