Young and Gapped? Political Knowledge of Girls and Boys in Europe

Abstract

[Abstract] This article aims at exploring the gender gap in levels of political knowledge, with a focus on lower secondary school students in Europe. Using the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2009 (ICCS), we find that boys outperform girls when asked about facts, but girls demonstrate greater knowledge when asked to reason about a particular political matter. Part of the gender gap in political knowledge among adolescents appears to be a function of what is defined as knowledge. We argue for the need to include a greater variety of items to measure political knowledge, including both factual and analytical domains of knowledge.