Gender-based Gap in Political Knowledge and Political Participation:Thoughts on Social Science Research and Social Governance
LU Xiao1 , ZHANG Han2
1.Institute of Science, Technology and Society at Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; 2.Department of Political Science at Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Abstract:There are salient differences in men and women's grasp of political knowledge and its geographical dimensions. Men tend to accumulate more political knowledge at the national and global levels, while women grasp more political knowledge at the regional and local levels. An analysis of the data obtained in the 2008 Chicago Area Study reaffirms the gender gap in political knowledge. Social science research questionnaires usually ask more questions about political knowledge at the national and global levels and are thus unable to accurately measure the level of women's political knowledge. In addition, men are more ready to guess when they actually don't know the answer, giving rise to the inflation of their political knowledge. Thus men's political knowledge as measured in such questionnaires has limited validity for predicting men's political participation. The implications of this studies are two-folds. Firstly, more attention should be given to the gender gap in the geographical scale of political knowledge when doing social science research on gender and political knowledge and political participation. Secondly, women grasp more political knowledge at the regional and local levels, which is of particular importance for the advancement of social governance and public participation.
鲁晓,张汉. 政治知识和政治参与的性别鸿沟:社会科学研究与社会治理层面的思考*[J]. 妇女研究论丛, 2014, 0(4): 14-21.
LU Xiao , ZHANG Han. Gender-based Gap in Political Knowledge and Political Participation:Thoughts on Social Science Research and Social Governance. , 2014, 0(4): 14-21.
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