Women in Children's Literature

Nilsen, Alleen Pace

doi:10.2307/375631

Cited by 51 publications

(27 citation statements)

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“…Early studies of picture books from the 1970s and before have shown that under-representation of girls and women and gender-typed character roles are prevalent in a variety of samples of children's books (Fisher, 1976;Nilsen, 1971Nilsen, , 1978Weitzman et al, 1972). Weitzman et al, pioneers in the field, studied Caldecott Medal winners and honor books (runners-up) from 1938 to 1970, as well as Newbery Award winners, Little Golden Books, and a sample of etiquette books from approximately the same time period.…”

Section: Sexism In Picture Books: How Much?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Stereotyping and Under-representation of Female Characters in 200 Popular Children’s Picture Books: A Twenty-first Century Update

et al. 2006

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Gender stereotyping and under-representation of girls and women have been documented in children's picture books in the past, in the hope that improvements would follow. Most researchers have analyzed awardwinning books. We explored sexism in top selling books from 2001 and a 7-year sample of Caldecott award-winning books, for a total of 200 books. There were nearly twice as many male as female title and main characters. Male characters appeared 53% more times in illustrations. Female main characters nurtured more than male main characters did, and they were seen in more indoor than outdoor scenes. Occupations were gender stereotyped, and more women than men appeared to have no paid occupation. Few differences were found between Caldecott award books and other books. A comparison of our book sample to 1980s and 1990s books did not reveal reduced sexism. The persistence of sexism in picture books and implications for children and parents are discussed.

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Section: Sexism In Picture Books: How Much?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Stereotyping and Under-representation of Female Characters in 200 Popular Children’s Picture Books: A Twenty-first Century Update

et al. 2006

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“…A study of Caldecott winners found that more than three times as many book titles included male names as female names, and that fully one-fourth of the books contained only token female characters. Perhaps most significant was that the presence of females had been steadily decreasing throughout the previous twenty years, as society focused its attention on educating male leaders and scientists to win the Cold War and the space race (Nilsen, 1971). Male names appeared in titles five times as often as female names in a random sample of books for young children, and the books of modern children's authors Maurice Sendak and Dr. Seuss included practically no females at that time (Fisher, 1970, pp.…”

Section: The 1970s: Psychological Aspects and Feminists Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing Children’s Interest in Reading

Stauffer¹

2007

lib

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Librarians have always discussed methods of developing children's interest in reading, but they have focused more on the books being read than on the act of reading. Although many touted the need to "establish the reading habit," a closer reading of the literature reveals that this referred specifically to reading "good books," those which socialized children into culturally acceptable sex roles. As early as 1876, articles warned of the dangers of sensational fiction for both girls and boys. By the 1940s, comic books had replaced sensational fiction as a potential "corrupting influence." Only in the late 1950s did public librarians begin to address the new problem of a reluctance to read at all among children in general and among boys in particular. This paper will examine the effect of gender role expectations on librarians' efforts to promote reading to children in the twentieth century. In particular it will explore the questions of whether these strategies continue to be designed to promote reading literature that reinforces society's gender role expectations and of whether they are designed to promote reading to both boys and girls equally, or whether one group is privileged at the expense of the other.

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“…While some authors of previous Caldecott studies look at winning titles across multiple decades (Nilges and Spencer, 2002;Clark et al, 2003), the majority of the previous research examines Medal and/or Honor books across a short span of time (Nilsen, 1971(Nilsen, , 1978Engel, 1981;Kolbe and LaVoie 1981;Dougherty and Engel, 1987;Williams et al, 1987;Albers, 1996) and sometimes incorporates literature beyond Caldecott Award-winners, such as Newbery or Coretta Scott King Award-winners or Little Golden Books (Weitzman, et al, 1972;Clark et al, 1993;Hamilton et al, 2006). In this paper, we explore only Caldecott Medal-winning titles due both to the limitations of space and the fact that previous research has suggested that picturebooks awarded the Caldecott Medal are generally representative of the content of Honor books as well as the larger body of published children's literature (Korenhaus and Demarest, 1993).…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…3 What becomes immediately clear in looking across the previous research on Caldecott books is that researchers often rely upon visual depictions within illustrations to determine whether or not a character is ''male'' or ''female'' (i.e., ''Does this character look like a man or a woman?''). 4 In some cases, the text is also consulted for gender clarification (Nilsen, 1971;Williams et al, 1987;Clark et al, 1993;Albers, 1996) and on at least one occasion, figures that were pictured, but not identified as either male or female ''by name, physical characteristics, attire, or personal pronoun references'' were labeled as ''neuter'' (Engel, 1981, p. 647). In this present study, these previous findings are problematized: relying upon visual cues in illustrations to determine the gender of a character or figure necessarily entails relying upon normative constructions or personal understandings of what it means and looks like to be either male or female (i.e., assuming that carrying a purse or wearing a dress identifies a character as female or that a figure wearing a suit is male).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%