Do storybooks really break children's gender stereotypes?

Factors Influencing Parents' Preferences and Parents' Perceptions of Child Preferences of Picturebooks

“…A variety of studies have considered how children might be influenced by gendered portrayals in books (Jennings, 1975; Ashton, 1983; see Abad and Pruden, 2013 for a review) and the role of parents in enculturating children into gender roles (Leaper, 2002; Tenenbaum and Leaper, 2002; Martin and Ruble, 2004; Kane, 2006). Examining how the gender of characters within preferred and non-preferred books may provide additional insight into these enculturation processes.…”

Flexibility of Gender Stereotypes: Italian Study on Comparative Gender-consistent and Gender-inconsistent Information

“…In another study realized by Cherney and Ryalls (1999), 3-to-6-year-old children were shown to have better memories for gender-consistent objects than for gender-inconsistent objects. Briefly, results of all these studies agreed on the fact that gender-consistent information is better remembered and recognized than gender-inconsistent one (Boston & Levy, 1991;Cherney, 2005;Liben & Bigler, 2002;Ruble & Martin, 1998) and that reading of gender-atypical storybooks can challenge children's gender stereotypes (Abad & Pruden, 2003;Green et al, 2004), because the processing of counter-stereotyped information is often distorted by children' social and cultural expectations. So, in the study of Green et al (2004), exposure to gender-atypical characters and play behaviors in storybooks have a significant impact on children's immediate and future play behavior.…”

“…Researchers have been concerned about the impact and relevance of gender-inconsistent and gender-consistent stimuli on children's gender stereotyping and gendered play behaviors (Abad & Pruden, 2003;Ashton, 1983;Killen et al, 2005;Welch-Ross & Schmidt, 1996), with the utilization of different paradigms and tasks in order to analyze gender schemas and stereotypes in developmental age: the picture recognition tasks (Cann & Newbern, 1984), memory and recall of story content tasks (Cherney & Ryalls, 1999;Liben & Signorella, 1993), sequential-touching tasks (Johnston, Bittinger, Smith & Madole, 2001;Oakes & Plumert, 2002;Thomas & Dahlin, 2000), and reading of counter-stereotypic storybooks and magazine (Abad & Pruden, 2003;Green, Bigler, & Catherwood, 2004;Spinner, Cameron, & Calogero, 2018). For example, in the study of Ashton (1983), 2-to-5-year-old children to whom a storybook about a same-sex child engaged in play with a gender-atypical toy was read were noted to play more with gender-atypical toys (e.g., a girl participant hears a story about a girl playing with a dump truck and immediately increases playing with trucks).…”

Gender representation in Filipino storybooks for children

“…This notion has in fact been distinguished within decades of research where several studies have foreshadowed Copyright © 2018, IJAL, EISSN 2502-6747 similar concerns specifically within storybooks (Ashton, 1983;Jennings, 1975in Abad & Pruden, 2013Trepanier-Street, Romatowski & McNair, 1990). These in fact are not only evident in texts but even in visual symbolisms.…”