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In a finding sure to inflame the gender wars, research funded by the U.K. government suggests women around the world, and especially in Canada, are significantly more ignorant of current affairs and politics than men.

This gender gap is constant across countries as diverse as the U.S., Greece, Japan and Australia. It is as clear in Colombia, where most people scored very low on tests about current news events, as it is in Norway, where knowledge is generally high. It is as evident in the U.K. and U.S., where gender equality is well established in the culture, as it is in Japan and South Korea, where it is not.

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That is, at least, according to the British report, which found consumption of news is “very much a masculine action, particularly in Canada, Norway, U.K. and U.S.”

The mystery of what causes this alleged knowledge gap is the “extraordinary question at the heart of this study,” said the lead author, James Curran, professor of communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, and director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre.