The new "gender gap": Issues for Australian adolescents' political socialization

This paper will report on the Australian component of the IEA Education Civic Study. Three thousand fourteen year old students were tested on political knowledge and surveyed on political issues. The partial credit model was used for data analysis enabling a fine grained measure of latent traits. Significant gender differences (p<.05) favouring females were found on attitudinal scales concerned with social justice, diversity and social movement citizenship. There were no gender differences in political knowledge. These results represent a new “gender gap” in adolescent political socialization research focusing on attitudes. Implications for theory and for civic education programs are discussed.