Gender Stereotypes in Children’s Literature

Gender stereotype refers to “treating the character with preconceived notions based on gender role perceptions” (Groce, 2001, p. 9). It simplified and generalized specific gender role and blocked the young readers from establishing a healthy and correct gender role model. The following section showed related research of children’s literature about this issue.

Jett-Simpson & Masland (1993) conducted a survey on the language arts classroom to examine what children's own stories reveal about the attributes they assign to females. They asked elementary school boys and girls to orally complete an unfinished story about a girl wanting to play baseball. Different ways of story completion was discussed and they found that a large number of children’s books contained gender bias in the content, language and illustrations. This bias was displayed through the way a gender is represented and the gender of the main character is depicted. To avoid such an inequity in classroom, they proposed that teachers could help move their students toward a more gender-fair classroom environment by using instructional settings already in place.

Fox (1993a) also reviewed children’s literature and found that girls were often portrayed as inactive rather than active. She argued that the way the author created the characters showed unconsciously the way he/she took account of gender issue.

She also suggested that both genders should be presented in literature as real as they are in life. Sexism in literature could be so insidious that it quietly conditioned boys and girls to accept the way they “see and read the world” (p. 88), thus reinforcing gender images.

Temple (1993) observed a gender issue in a college-level children’s literature course. He found that boys, in children’s literature, tended to be depicted as roles such as fighters, adventurers and rescuers. On the other hand, girls were shaped in passive roles such as caretakers, mothers, princesses in need of rescuing, and characters who

support the male figures. He suggested that it was the educators’ duty to teach children to challenge what they read, hear and see.

Peterson & Lach (1990) examined gender stereotyping in children’s books and the representation of males and females over a twenty-year time frame. They reviewed a random sample of 136 books selected from the booklist in The Horn Book for the years 1967, 1977, and 1987.

They found that girls were often portrayed to be remained docile in a domestic setting in 1967, and the 1977 sample showed the strongest imbalance of occurrences for females in all categories. In the 1987 sample, girls were much more likely to engage in an adventure and to appear as the main character in a folktale, fantasy, or adventure story. In spite of growing numbers of female characters, the result showed that males still dominated the landscape of children’s literature. Males were described as active, independent and generally competent. Many books were full of stereotypical language and examples that were biased against females. Peterson &

Lach (1990) concluded that while the prevalence of stereotypes had decreased somewhat, the decreases in quantity and in kind had not been statistically meaningful.

The biased literature could hinder a child’s developmental potential and might taint their cognitive development in a way that would present the child with an inaccurate social view.

In another study featuring literature, Benjamin & Irwin-DeVitis (1998) conducted a survey of the participants in a summer literature discussion group with adolescent girls in grades six to eight. The discussions focused on literature with young adult female protagonists. To assess feelings about the respondents’ favorite literary character, they sent one thousand questionnaires to male and female students in Louisiana and New York schools.

As the researchers stated, they “asked students in grades six, seven, and eight to identify their favorite fictional characters and then give reasons for their choices.”

(p.65). The survey results were then compared with responses generated by the girls at the summer discussion group. On the topic of devaluing girls’ intelligence, the girls in the discussion group revealed to think other girls were consciously restricting their abilities in the classroom in order to win favor from their male classmates. The survey responses noted favorite male characters because of their bravery, independence, and strength.

A boy said he admired Maniac Magee (Spinelli, 1991) for his “great personality and characteristics” as well as being “brave, strong, fast, and even caring” (p.65) and another boy praised Robbie in Triple Play (Montgomery, 1991) for he had acquired the position of the “baseball teams favorite all-star player” (p.65). On the other hand, the favorite female characters for both males and females were selected because of their self-sacrificing behavior and physical attractiveness.

A sixth-grade girl wrote that she admired Carter in R. L. Stine’s The Cheater (1991) because she “would do anything to keep her father happy, even cheat on a math test” (p.66). Another girl admired Dawn, one of the female characters in The Baby-sitters Club series, stated that because “she is pretty, nice, and very sweet. She has beautiful hair and is very skinny” (p.66). As for boys, the responses showed a distressing aspect that they are incapable of identifying positive traits they admired in female characters. One boy responded “I never admired a female character” while another stated “They [female characters] are all pretty much the same” (p.66).

As for fairy tales, Mendelson (1997) explored the roles allocated to women in the famous collection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Being recognized as classical literature, Grimm’s fairy tales were exposed to many children in their early years and its’ influence was still considerable due to the continued circulation and study of this

genre. Mendelson reviewed all of the two hundred tales for instances of collaboration between characters and found that in about fifty tales, or 25% of the tales, collaboration was a “significant feature of the tale’s narrative makeup.” (p.111). The collaborative tales indicated that “characters can do more if they work together than they can when they act alone.” (p.111). He stated that, although collaboration figures appeared in many of the more than 200 tales, the benefits of collective action were not extended to women. In other words, the overwhelming majority of the collaborative efforts featured no female characters. To be more specifically, only three of the two hundred tales featured women working together. Mendelson added that instances hint of collaboration were merely “evil women’s groups” (p.115) whose primary purpose was to victimize other characters, usually other women, as opposed to collaborating for a worthy cause. This study suggested that in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, females did not work together in groups to solve specific conflicts.

Singh (1998) argued that children's books play a significant part in transmitting a society's culture to children. This research began by discussing how the genders were portrayed in children's literature, and then addressed the question of why gender-representation in children's literature was significant. It also discussed what teachers should keep in mind while selecting children's books, and how teachers can use children's literature to promote gender equity.

Tsao (2008) also dedicated in the cultural and social perspective of children’s literature. This study discussed the role of printed books in providing children with awareness of different gender roles and relationships between genders. The researcher reviewed the studies which focused in children's awareness of different gender roles in recent decades. Children’s picture books play a significant role in providing related information to kids. Since males were habitually described as active and domineering, females rarely revealed their identities and very frequently were represented as meek

and mild. This discriminatory portrayal in many children’s books ran the risk of leading children toward a misrepresented and misguided realization of their world.

To help children construct their view of human diversity, appropriate children’s literature should be used carefully at the right timing.

In summary, researchers had found that gender bias existed in the content, language, and illustrations of numerous children’s books (Jett-Simpson & Masland, 1993), and these books frequently portrayed girls as obedient and inactive (Fox, 1993a). Girls were represented as sweet, naive, conforming, and dependent, while boys were typically described as strong, adventurous, independent, and capable (Jett-Simpson & Masland, 1993). Males were presented as rescuers while females were portrayed as people waiting for rescue (Temple, 1993). Gender differences in literature might be more equitable between male and female than in previous times (Peterson & Lach, 1990), but males and females still recognized different characteristics when selecting their favorite protagonists (Benjamin & Irwin-DeVitis, 1998), and that a sample of traditional literature was almost devoid of constructive collaboration between females (Mendelson, 1997). Gender stereotypical roles were constraining to both genders and pressure them to behave in ways that are gender appropriate rather than ways best suited to their personality (Singh, 1998; Tsao, 2008).

As a result, it was concluded that these studies showed that girls were portrayed less often than boys in children’s book, and both genders were frequently presented in stereotypes.