The gender gap in political interest revisited

To what extent does conventional survey measurement capture the political interest of men andwomen equally well? We aim to answer this question by relying on unique data from a nationalonline survey in Spain, where we combined questions that unpack the standard indicator of politicalinterest. Findings show that gender is relevant in explaining the political issues that people arepersonally interested in. Moreover, political interest is associated with the topics that men areinterested in the most, to the extent that the association of gender with political interest vanishesonce individuals’ specific interests are accounted for. This suggests that at least part of thedocumented gender gap in general political interest might be due to the fact that when prompted tothink about politics, women disregard their own specific interests and instead focus on thedominant, male-oriented definition of it.