Ask me about maternity leave instead. An experiment on women and men’s levels of political knowledge

Questions about political knowledge advantage men by choosing topics that are more relevant to them than to women. Respondents are asked about institutional figures and procedures, which are not among women’s top political priorities; indeed, even when questioned about a female politician, women provide fewer correct answers than men. In fact, women provide fewer answers altogether – they would rather say that they ‘don’t know’ – and whether this tendency is reflecting sincere unawareness or lack of self-confidence remains unclear. This experiment was designed so as to test both women and men’s levels of knowledge and propensity to answer before political questions that vary in content and DK protocol. The results suggest the presence of distinguished areas of political knowledge between women and men. They also show that using a DK-discouraging protocol is advantaging respondents of both genders uncover some hidden knowledge on their corresponding areas of expertise.