Women and the News

I agree with Atrios that Linda Hirschman seemed unduly dependent on anecdotal evidence. That said, there's plenty of information in the Pew Center's survey of media consumption habits to support what she's saying. Download the detailed demographic tables and see for yourself. 44 percent of men, but only 38 percent of women, say they read a newspaper yesterday. Young men, middle aged men, and old men were all more likely to read a newspaper than were women of the same cohort. Men were also more likely, across age group, to have read about the news online.

Just 32 percent of working mothers and just 33 percent of single parents (a group overwhelmingly composed of women) say they read a newspaper yesterday. Women also listen to less radio news than men (31 percent as opposed to 42 percent say they listened yesterday) and watch TV news in about equal numbers (57 percent to 58 percent). Women were more likely to watch the nightly network news, but less likely to watch cable news channels, and way more likely to watch morning shows. Fewer women (3 percent against 6 percent) said they regularly watch C-SPAN, slightly fewer women (16 percent to 18 percent) say they regularly listen to NPR, fewer women (16 percent to 13 percent) say they regularly read newsmagazines, fewer women (7 percent to 3 percent) say they regularly read business magazines, and fewer women say they watch The Daily Show.

I don't think these facts should be read in a disparaging way (i.e., "women are dumb") since there are lots of obvious explanations for them -- women have less free time in general thanks to the "second shift," news content is overwhelming generated by men, there's a lock-in factor where people who expect their audience to be male don't try to appeal to women, the construction of what is and isn't "political" embeds certain male assumptions, women are poorer on average, etc. -- but they are the facts. Women consume less news than men, and the news they do consume draws disproportionately from network television broadcasts that, as you can rapidly confirm by watching, are truly dismal in terms of information content.

UPDATE: It should be said that every survey I've ever seen shows that the overwhelmingly majority of men are almost completely ignorant about the issues facing the country so it's not clear to me that there's any crucial significance to the gender gap. It's a simple fact of life that the voting is done by a population of people -- male, female, and otherwise -- who have very little relevant information at their disposal. Outside a narrow circle of political junkies, average people just aren't interested in politics.