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?

So the Mr Men books aren't sexist, but the assumption that Mr Men and the female equivalent needed to be in separate series in the first place is a reflection of society that splits by gender as is the fact that Mr Men was commenced 10 years before Little Miss.

"Dinosaurs Love Underpants" isn't sexist, but the fact that all the dinosaurs are "he" is, again, a reflection of a society where a default animal, driver, diver, paraglider is male. Catch yourself over the next week using either the male or female pronoun when you don't know the sex, and see which you use more.

Didn't you find any non-gendered items? Things like the Aliens love Underpants books for example I chose specifically because they weren't gendered at all.

Massive x posts! Should have refreshed. But I didn't read the Aliens books as 'he', from memory. Must go and check.

My children are teens and choose their own books mostly now. I made some very conscious choices to seek out books with strong female leads once they had real stories, but I would strongly suspect that if I pulled out the box of small children's picture books that I have kept for potential grandchildren the vast majority of characters would be 'he', in a context where 'she' would work just as well, and I suspect that when I was reading them aloud to my children I wouldn't have thought about it at all. It was just the default that a character of indeterminate sex was 'he'. And yes I avoided all the pick sparkly princess crap that might have changed the balance a bit. I have an older son and slightly younger daughter, all books at that age were for both of them.

I didn't count lead characters because it's impossible to be objective about who's the lead.

I counted gender-specific pronouns: literally the number of times a text uses "he", "she", "him", "her" etc. This is a much more objective way to see who is actually the main subject of the story, who is doing the most talking & acting, who makes things happen.

It's the same reasoning behind the Bechdel test: even a strong female lead isn't necessarily allowed to do all the talking.

In the case of my kids picture books, I certainly came across some good female characters (Maisy mouse, Meg the witch, Little Princess etc) but also huge numbers of books featuring miscellaneous male animals!

OP, you're quite right, it is an issue.
In my (feminist) household we are currently struggling with the fact that dd's favourite story, in all the world, is Little Red Ridinghood. So patriarchal in message! Am considering just re-writing a version with pure gender reversal, and otherwise leaving it as it is (not sure yet what that would be like, it might still seem a bit of a hateful story!)
Getting distracted there, but yes, totally agree with you. And would like to do something,but don't know what.

Not in the slightest bit helpful but was watching a documentary about Lewis Carroll recently which pointed out that Alice was the first female main character of a children's book, and extremely intelligent with it.

Yet she was probably only the hero because of Dodgson's extremely unhealthy obsession with young girls & to me the whole book has always given me the creeps and comes across as an attempt at grooming.

I would add that there has been a recent emphasis on trying to get boys to read, based on the view that boys are more reluctant readers, so that might account for the boy-focus in recent children's literature.

Sorry, x posts. That's it - it's the default male! Exactly the issue.

I wish we could stop obsessing about strong female role models, in books, films etc, and instead just have gender-blind casting & characters.

My DD read lots of princess books. She dressed as a princess to pick up her brother from school at 4. Was generally sparkly and pink. The first ya book she read was The Hunger Games.
As a teen she is a convinced feminist and argues forcefully with those who make sexist comments.
The dreadful books she read now provide us with great grounds for discussion.

Not in this house op, although that's mainly because the book shelf is 90% fucking Peppa....

Buffy I was just thinking exactly along the same lines ... crowd sourced database. I like the verification idea! You sound like a fellow geek

If I did it, would any of you lot contribute?

Perhaps you could do that then Beaky? It would take 5 mins to count how many of the books have a. a solely female title or cover illustration, b. a solely male title or cover illustration or c. neither.

As opposed to an hour and a half to read over 40 books, which it doesn't look like anyone is going to do. And it might give am idea as to whether there is a bias towards males before the books are even open.

Projecting, your post re Peppa did remind me of something else I wanted to say - which is that I bloody love Peppa! And get quite bothered by readers/watchers who describe her as badly behaved, obnoxious, etc. Because to me, she's a nice girl, who is clever, has strong opinions, states them vigorously, and is also kind. I feel a lot of the opposition to her is patriarchally driven (what? A young female? Stating her opinions?) Many parents of my acquaintance have told me they don't like their dc watching Peppa because she's such a bad role model, and I utterly disagree. She's a decently strong female character, in my opinion. (Yes, there is a fair bit of casual sexism elsewhere in the stories, but choosing to ignore this for now).
So I quite like that dd enjoys the Peppa offering,

Lonny, Aliens LU is pronoun free. It's Dinosaurs that has "he" everywhere (though I change all to she cos it still scans - you can't change "cavemen" so readily!)

Did a quick scan of the 4 books in the bedroom. 100% male, male, male, 42% male. One DS, 2.5.

I like the idea of counting his/her/he/she etc, rather than just characters. (If you have the text in ebook form you could automate this - not so likely for picture books though.)

The default male makes a huge difference - the assumption that any random character will be male makes even a strong female lead into a token.

My dissertation (a veeeeery long time ago) was on gender representation and the language used in children's literature.

What was interesting (to a nerdy linguist) was that even in books where there are strong female characters (I used the Narnia series, as equal boy/girl characters, supposedly, amongst the main characters) the language used, and the representation of said female characters is shocking.

So eg, in the Lion, the witch & the wardrobe, where Lucy is the mainest main character, she still ends up with less to say than Peter (the more minor boy, despite his age, as Edmund has his whole subplot), and the language used both to and about her is very gendered and biased. And of course Susan barely says a word - only 3 or 4 utterances iirc (hazy, was a long time ago - might be confusing it with a later book where she drops out of sight almost completely).

It is a very real, insidious problem. As another poster said above, perceptions of females arising from the type of language they use are also shocking (talking about the Peppa pig example) - things which would be seen as positives in a male character (and also cross over into RL for a moment, in business/boardroom situations) - taking the lead, taking control of a conversation, interrupting to put your point across, having your own ideas not just reacting to the ideas of others - are usually seen as negative traits in female characters.

I watch a doco/comedy last night. Believe it or not but our sister way back in the 60s were trying to right this. The show mentioned Dr Seuss book which are excellent almost exclusively male. I for one am going to try to get as many female characters into my DSs collect.

Catch yourself over the next week using either the male or female pronoun when you don't know the sex, and see which you use more.

I actually noticed myself defaulting to the male pronoun in this way recently and have been really trying hard to address this since when talking to DD.

Hazchem, I noticed that when comparing the top UK and US picture books online. The US one is far more heavy on male characters and a lot of that is because of how many of them are Dr Seuss ones.

Panda - I think some of that can be excused by the time CS Lewis was writing in ("battles are ugly when women fight" - yes thank you CS Santa) - but many of those books are still around and I didn't notice when I was a child, so I doubt my children are spotting it either.

Let's face it, neither of the boys in the Famous Five wishes he was a girl...

I'm not really talking about Beast Quest vs Rainbow Fairies, but about books that are supposedly for children rather than for boys or girls.

Pandas your dissertation sounds brilliant! I think linguists have amazing insight into the mechanisms behind sexism, wish this stuff was more widely known about.

Did you read Deborah Tannen's book - called something like Talking 9-5 - about male & female speech in a work/professional context? Exactly the points you make about double standards.

AKnickerful, the whole point is that one does not overtly notice the differences in language use between the sexes. But it is still there, underlining and highlighting who has power/control in a situation. And it is all around us. Everyday. When we talk to each other, when we are spoken about, right from the earliest days.

And this imbalance in literature (from picture books to classics) just reinforces that.

My point re: the Narnia books wasn't so much about the classic attitudes - girls in battle etc - but more about the actual language used. More questions and hesitant remarks from the girls, more bold statements and interruptions from the boys. And lots of other linguistic markers to show the sex of the person speaking. And the amount of utterances did not tally at all with the 'strength' and main-part ness of the character, etc.

It was indeed a fascinating project.