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"Children's literature is inherently sexist because the majority of heroes are male, a study claims. An analysis of 6,000 best-selling children’s books published during the past century concludes that male lead characters vastly outnumber female ones. And in a conclusion that will baffle fans of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Anne of Green Gables and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, researchers said their findings indicated a ‘symbolic annihilation of women’."
—Plus, why are animals so overrepresented? Isn't that a little speciesist?
The numbers go down slightly if you screen out all things Huckle.
But doesn't James and the Giant Peach skew these results towards prunus trees?
This jibes, but then again, I was also reading a lot of Lady Authors as a kid (Cleary, Blume, L'engle), which I thought we were supposed to do?
@boyofdestiny Did you finish the entire Baby Sitter's Club series?
@BadUncle There were like 200 of those!
@cherrispryte: Obviously this study didn't include Sweet Valley High…
I wonder how those numbers work out over time. I wouldn't be surprised at the first half of the century being male dominated, but I'd guess it'd start turning around in the 60s or 70s.
Am I the only one who thinks the "31% of protagonists were female while 57% were male" is actually a legitimate problem?
@cherrispryte 12% were the cast of "animal farm" and "charlotte's web".
@roboloki Oh no, I didn't mean the fact that the numbers don't add up to 100 – it said in the article that the other 12% did not have a specific gender. I was more looking at the discrepancy between the clearly-female and clearly-male characters.
@cherrispryte It does concern me, but one thing I wonder about these studies is whether they are assuming that boys will only relate to male characters and girls will only relate to female characters. Using a hard count of protagonist gender as a metric for bias seems to reinforce this idea.
@the Loud Coast I think the standard assumption is that girls will relate to characters of all genders, while boys will only relate to male characters. Which is problematic on an entirely different level.
For what it might be worth, Maria Bustillos sort of addressed this subject a while ago: http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/the-phantom-tollbooth-or-the-democratizing-principle-of-literature
@cherrispryte
One question is whether it's a legitimate problem, another is whose problem it is. A writer might not in all cases be able to choose the kinds of stories or characters he or she can do a good job with.
So, is the question that good children's literature with female protags don't get published? Or is it that there are those who feel that writers should make stories according to what others feel that they should? Cause I gotta tell you, there are LOT of shitty kids books out there, and one of the worst problems is that they are just too PREACHY. Kids music too. These days you can't be a kid and read books that celebrate doing dumb kid stuff. It's all about being a good sibling or always brushing your teeth or some other nonsense.
Adding another requirement that writers should write about half and half girls and boys is missing the point of books altogether. We should celebrate writers who write good books because that is what they like to do.
Perhaps it just reflects the fact that there are many more boy heroes that girl heroes in the real world. (Ok, now I'll go ask my two daughters and then head over to the hairpin.)
I use to work in children's publishing: the reason that fewer books with female protags get published is that editors think that girls and boys alike will read a book with a boy hero; only girls will read a book with a girl hero. Editors are afraid that if they publish a book with a girl hero, they will loose half their audience.
Of course, this a modern thing. Alice, Anne, etc. prove that this idea is flawed. Kids of all genders still read those books, right?
It is not possible to link to "Theater Has a Gender Bias? Do Tell" too often.
Arg. Can't we just encourage (and allow) children to identify w/ characters they relate to regardless of gender? I don't think kids really care that much about this; I know I didn't.
@palindromesforme yeah, it's funny. Adults over analyzing child's play. But really, I'd like there to be more female characters who are strong/awesome/heroes in all genres.