Kids books - find this really worrying

[BeakyMinder]

Recently I did something very sad and geeky. I read every single one of the 43 picture books belonging to my DDs and counted every single gender reference: he, she, him, her, his, hers. No complicated contextual analysis.

Result = about 75% male, 25% female

So basically, females are invisible in kids books - we talk less, are talked about less, & often don't appear at all. Lots of books with all-male casts.

Maybe it's just me with a house full of sexist books, but seems unlikely given I'm the feminist DD of a feminist and have 2 DDs.

Fuck, it's depressing. Any of you think something could be done about it?

Tricky one really. Writers are under no obligation whatsoever to write books that represent genders equally. Anyone can write a children's book and have it published so it's feasible for you to write your own to address this issue.

By your own admission, your analysis wasn't complex so it may be worth holding off the sexist angle until you've had an opportunity to look at the industry on the whole. I grew up reading Janet and John but also loved the Mr Men, which is obviously one way traffic. Not sure you could class the Mr Men as sexist though, even if all the characters are male.

Yup: 1) check your research! Go googling and see if anyone agrees. You could try asking Buffy the resident academic. Assuming your results are accurate, move on to:
2) Get writing
3) See if there're any feminist-leaning publishers out there you could sell the notion of publishing to
4) If you wanted to get really arsey you could try writing to big name kids' publishers to alert them to the (validated) research and ask how they're planning to redress the balance.

Do you know of A Mighty Girl? They have a great book list for all ages.

www.amightygirl.com/books

Oh yeah, feminist kids books. I remember the ones my mum bought me in the 1970s. No one else's mum bought them, which was why they made zero impact on our sexist society.

It's not just down to authors - Publishers & booksellers (especially the supermarkets) decide what's available, then parents, schools & libraries decide what to buy surely?

I have rather more than 43 picture books and there are definitely more male than female characters. Just like in films...

I think the simple analysis of number of references to gender is perfectly valid, it's why the Bechdel Test is so powerful. As soon as you start applying rules that are open to interpretation then there will be arguments, e.g. I'm not keen on the Mr Men precisely because there are next to no women in the books. How can it not be sexist to have a whole series of books with no women? Sure there are the 'Little Miss' books but why not have 'Mrs Woman' books? Why are females infantilised and males adults? Why were there separate series in the first place?

I think it's incredibly important to have gender balance in culture and media. My daughters love the (few) books we have about sisters because they identify with those more than any other book.

Have you been deliberately eschewing books aimed at girls with princesses and fairies and whatnot? Your purchasing decisions may influence your results. A random selection from a bookshop would be less biased.

I was concerned about this OP & tried to find books where the main character was female, or had a strong female character, or at least went against the usual gendered male = hero/female = support/in need of rescuing etc. A mighty girl website was fab, as were many recommendations on here too. DD is now 9, almost 10, and she notices when the female characters are weak/just for support to the male characters, & questions where the female character isn't allowed/can't/won't/doesn't like the things she sees as fun/cool/exciting etc.

I agree with nobel's comment - if you actively seek out the books/stories you'd rather have your DD read, instead of the gendered stuff you have reviewed & aren't happy with, then you'll be doing what it is that you feel needs to be done. I do occasionally still lapse into he/him/his when talking generally about stuff and my DD usually pulls me up for assuming he/him/his. And it makes me every time she does cos she's right!

If you give an indication of your DD's age, we can make some suggestions to get you started or just check out A Mighty Girl linked previously.

That's right, the Bechdel test, that's exactly what I had in mind.

Argh, Noblegiraffe I think you may be dead right there - we are a princess free zone!

Anyone fancy doing an audit of their own book collection? It only took me about 1.5 hours. Would be v interested to see the numbers for those with sons rather than daughters.

Well, I've been a professional full time children's book picture book illustrator for over 20 years and only in the past 3 years have had over 5 books published with strong female characters.

My peers have equally published books with plenty of female leads.

I think you should take a trip around the selection at your local bookshop.

Several of you have made helpful suggestions about tackling our books at home, which is appreciated, but wasn't the point of the thread.

Yes, I can do something about what my kids read at home, but I'm powerless when it comes to the reading choices that shape our society. If authors, publishers, libraries, schools, book shops, supermarkets all make small, insidiously sexist choices about the books available to our kids ... Well, how can society ever change if most kids are subtly brainwashed to regard females as invisible?

I think you've been getting a bit of a hard time here, OP. I'd say that IME what you describe is a definite feature of picture books (at least, thinking back to the pretty random selection that we got from the library + given as gifts, I didn't really buy new picture books), and very often on the Childrens books topic there are people looking for picture books featuring girl leads.

It does change, though. Once they get a bit older, there seems to be a phase of very overtly gendered books (the joys of Rainbow Magic / My Secret Unicorn vs Beast Quest). Easy-ish to avoid up to a point by sticking to old classics, but still very noticeable.

Then when you hit YA books, there are absolutely stacks of strong female lead characters. I suspect because when you get to the age when dc buy their own books, the biggest market is girls as statistically they read more!

A selection of sticker books in a chain bookshop. There's (for the girls) Princesses, Fairies, Fashion Designers, Dancers and Weddings - far more pictures of girls in the weddings book strangely. Just the one boy.
Then the other books include Action Heroes (no girls), Football ( a few girls), Knights & Castles (one or two princesses maybe?) and Pirates (you guessed it).
And yes, I really did have nothing better to do than look through the books.

Indeed but presumably you purchased some, if not all of your 43 books. If people purchase more mindfully then their children are less exposed in the formative years.

In the same way that I bought a range of boy's/girl's/gender neutral toys, it's possible to do the same with books. As such I read a range to my kids. Looking at them both now, they seem to select a broad range of books from the library/book shops. The situation is quite as helpless as you may think.

Back back to the OP I would imagine the first thing to do is to research the selection critieria of the main publishing houses. Without this info you really cannot form solid conclusions either way.

It's also worth looking at how many people self publish.

Finally, books that have a female lead and predominantly female characters could be completely sexist whilst an all male book could be completely gender balanced in the storyline. Understanding the limitations of your research methods needs to be appreciated too.

Yes, my older DD is 9 now - definitely no lack of suitable books there. Much of what she's reading was written in the last few years; maybe literature for older kids dates more quickly so the sexist old classics fall out of favour, thank god?

Maybe picture books are more boy-oriented because they're bought by parents and grandparents who favour old classics?

Right. I think my research method is as good as it's going to get, for the reasons outlined by Bluelamp. Sexism is an utterly subjective concept - at least with my method you can count things, and the limitations will apply equally to male and female.

But my sample was not representative cos it was just one person's collection. What would a better sample be?

Visit the library perhaps as they have a wider range of books than any of us.

And I wouldn't necessarily agree with bluelamp. The Mr Men collection may be all male based but that in itself doesn't make them sexist.

Off the top of my head, strong female picture book leads would be....(bear in mind they might not be very very well known titles).

Emily Brown and the Thing
This Rabbit belongs to Emily Brown
Hubble Bubble books by Tracey Corderoy and Joe Berger
The Princess and The Peas by Caryl Hart
The Paper bag Princess
Mabel and Me (best of friends)
Angelina Ballerina (yes Ballet etc but lots of strong female characters and Angelina is no push over)
Charlie and Lola.
Little Princess by Tony Ross

Plenty more, just look beyond the Juila Donaldson selection you get in most places. Nothing wrong with Donaldson but there's other stuff.

Okay, my kids - one boy one girl are now teenagers. I have pulled the top 50 picture books from a box, all bought about 10-15 years ago. I haven't gone through and counted every character, but from the characters on the front cover - about 80% female.

Most common female characters-

Mrs. Armitage
Milly Molly Mandy
Mog the Cat
Meg the Witch
Winnie the Witch
Miffy
Little Red Riding Hood and other assorted Ladybird style fairy tale characters.

I didn't think about the gender when buying the books, and most were bought for DS as he is the eldest, and got handed down to DD. The ladybird ones are probably quite traditional and sexist, but Mrs Armitage certainly is not!

Now interestingly, I would say that the classic children's books tend to be surprisingly unsexist.

Think about Narnia, Swallows and Amazons (Susan easily balanced out by Nancy ), E. Nesbit's books, One End Street, etc etc. Loads of strong girl characters.

If we're talking older books the current ones also feature great female leads, Goth Girl, Northern Lights, The Hunger Games. It can be argued that Hermione in Harry Potter was one of the 'leads' being pretty essential to most plot line, using her intellect and bravery to save pretty much everyone most of the time.

As I'm in the publishing world, I've been at many recent meetings where publishing houses are very keen to find good, strong stories that will appeal to boys (although of course but not solely for boys) as they find that many boys loose interest in reading at a young age sadly. The picture books that they push the most are gender neutral ones that are just great stories with great characters which will stick in the mind of the public.

Children's publishing is run by women in general (99% of editors, marketing people and designers I work with are women). I can assure, I've never come across any 'agenda' that keeps stories with strong female leads out of books.

I wasn't talking about strong female leads, I was talking about share of voice. How much talking do male characters do versus female characters. I'm also not a conspiracy theorist btw.

But I thought your OP highlighted all male casts and 25% of female references?

In fact you said this explicitly in your first post

To some extent you are talking about male and female leads, because your OP mentioned lots of books with all male casts, which is definitely going to remove female share of voice.

I too think you are getting a hard time, OP.

You might find this interesting;
womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/files/2013_It%27s_a_Man%27s_World_Report.pdf

ManOf, the OP is not saying that her book collection is sexist just because it has primarily male leads. Just as a film isn't sexist if it fails the Bechdel test but not sexist if it doesn't. The SATC films both pass the test, for example, whereas there are doubtless episodes of Buffy that fail.

What it's contrasting is frequency of focus. It is a lot rarer for films to fail the reverse Bechdel, even films with a female lead or female ensemble.