Sixty Years of Gender Representation in Children’s Books: Conditions Associated with Overrepresentation of Male versus Female Protagonists

Abstract

As a reflection of prominent cultural norms, children’s literature plays an integral role in the acquisition and development of societal attitudes. Previous reports of male overrepresentation in books targeted towards children are consistent with a history of gender disparity across media and society. However, it is unknown whether such bias has been attenuated in recent years with increasing emphasis on gender equity and greater accessibility of books. Here, we provide an up-to-date estimate of the relative proportion of male and female protagonists in 3,288 children’s books (0-16 years) published between 1960-2020. We find that although the proportion of female protagonists has increased over this 60-year period, male protagonists remain overrepresented even in recent years. Importantly, we also find stable effects related to author gender, age of the target audience, book genre (fiction vs. non-fiction), and character type (human vs. non-human) on the male-to-female ratio of protagonists. We suggest that this comprehensive account of the factors influencing the rates of appearance of male and female protagonists can be leveraged to develop specific recommendations for promoting more equitable gender representation in children’s literature, with important consequences for child development and society.

Exploring Pre-Service Teachers’ Perspectives: Gender and Gender Representation across Human Protagonists in Picture Books

“…Since Weitzman et al's hallmark study in 1972, gender bias in picture books has been studied from different perspectives (Casey et al, 2020;Peterson & Lach, 1990). These studies over the past 50 decades (1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s) have uncovered similar issues of gender misrepresentation in picture books.…”