Women Also Know Stuff: Challenging the Gender Gap in Political Sophistication

Abstract

This article proposes a simple but powerful framework to measure political sophistication based on open-ended survey responses. Discursive sophistication uses automated text analysis methods to capture the complexity of individual attitude expression. I validate the approach by comparing it to conventional political knowledge metrics using different batteries of open-ended items across five surveys spanning four languages (total). The new measure casts doubt on the oft-cited gender gap in political knowledge: women might know fewer facts about institutions and elites, but they do not differ substantively in the sophistication of their expressed political attitudes.