Accessed 20th
August 2013
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/06/gender-imbalance-children-s-literature
Study finds huge gender imbalance in children's literature
New
research reveals male characters far outnumber females, pointing to 'symbolic
annihilation of women and girls'
theguardian.com, Friday 6 May 2011 14.21 BST
From The Very Hungry Caterpillar to
the Cat in the Hat, Peter Rabbit to Babar, children's
books are dominated by male central characters, new research has found, with
the gender disparity sending children a message that "women and girls
occupy a less important role in society than men or boys".
Looking at almost 6,000 children's
books published between 1900 and 2000, the study, led by Janice McCabe, a
professor of sociology at Florida
State University
Published in the April issue of
Gender & Society, the study, Gender
in Twentieth-Century Children's Books, looked at Caldecott
award-winning books, the well-known US
Although the gender disparity came
close to disappearing by the 1990s for human characters in children's books,
with a ration of 0.9 to 1 for child characters and 1.2 to 1 for adult
characters, it remained for animal characters, with a "significant
disparity" of nearly two to one. The study found that the 1930s to 1960s,
the period between waves of feminist activism, "exhibits greater disparities
than earlier and later periods".
"The messages conveyed through
representation of males and females in books contribute to children's ideas of
what it means to be a boy, girl, man, or woman. The disparities we find point
to the symbolic annihilation of women and girls, and particularly female
animals, in 20th-century children's literature, suggesting to children that
these characters are less important than their male counterparts," write
the authors. "The disproportionate numbers of males in central roles may encourage
children to accept the invisibility of women and girls and to believe they are
less important than men and boys, thereby reinforcing the gender system."
The authors of the study said that
even gender-neutral animal characters are frequently labelled as male by
mothers reading to their children, which only "exaggerates the pattern of
female underrepresentation". "These characters could be particularly
powerful, and potentially overlooked, conduits for gendered messages,"
they said. "The persistent pattern of disparity among animal characters
may reveal a subtle kind of symbolic annihilation of women disguised through
animal imagery."
The Carnegie medal-winning children's
author Melvin Burgess, whose own novels regularly feature female central
characters, pointed to the "truism in publishing that girls will read
books that have boy heroes, whereas boys won't read books that have girl
heroes".
"Boys are far more
gender-specific," he said. "I guess the challenge is to write books
for boys that have female characters in, that the boys will relate to. It's a
sad fact that books written for boys do tend to fall rapidly into the old
stereotypes, and the action figures, baddies etc are generally male, and very
straightforward males as well. I try to get away from that. It's a been a while
since I wrote an action-type book, but I am working on one now and it does
involve four young
people – two girls,
two boys – and I always try to make my girls really stand out."
But it's not only an absence of
female central characters which is a problem in children's books, believes
former children's laureate Anne Fine: it's how the women are represented when
they do appear. "Publishers rightly take care to put in positive images of
a mix of races, but seem not to even notice when they use stereotypical and way
out-of-date images of women," she said. "In modern classics such as
Owl Babies and Hooray for Fish! it's always the mother, never the dad, whom the
child ends up wanting and needing. God forbid each book should try to cover all
the 'issues'; but we do need a bit of balance. Children's authors should make
an effort to do a bit of role widening. I try. You wouldn't notice, but in
every single one of my books, the male can cook. In The Country Pancake, my
farmer just happens to be a female. And on and on."
The notion, meanwhile, that boys only
read books by and about males does "become a self-fulfilling
prophecy", Fine said. "More worryingly, in these new lists of
recommended books for boys, there's a heap of fantasy and violence, very little
humour (except for the poo and bum sort), and almost no family novels at all.
If you offer boys such a narrow view of the world, and don't offer them novels
that show them dealing with normal family feelings, they will begin to think
this sort of stuff is not for them."
Fine believes that "women should
be giving a much beadier eye to the books they share with children ... It's
important to balance much loved old-fashioned classics with stuff that evens
things up a bit and reflects women's current role in the world," she said.
But Carnegie medal winner Frank
Cottrell Boyce feels that "women have an influence in children's
literature that belies the numbers".
"I'm sure this is because
brilliant women like Edith Nesbitt, who in a fairer society might have gone
into politics or science, have instead poured all their brilliance into
writing. The result is that over several years, women have produced really
important – really, really important – children's fiction that has helped
define eras and people," he said. "I'm thinking right back to Little
Women – which has provided women with a roadmap of identity for generations–
and Anne of Green Gables. But also of the way women from Enid Blyton and
Richmal Crompton – incomparably our best prose stylist and paradoxically the
writer who defined boyhood – to JK Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson and Stephenie
Meyer, have totally dominated popular narrative culture. So never mind the
quantity, feel the quality."
