Reading is a highly recommended activity for children and adolescents and children’s stories are a good way to make the little ones fall asleep at night and entertain themselves by reading during the day, however, according to a study by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) these books could be perpetuating gender stereotypes and giving a perception of the role of women and men that does not adapt to reality.
The research has analyzed 247 stories from the Wisconsin Children’s Book Corpus aimed at an audience under the age of five. The results, which have been published in the journal Psychological Science, have shown that the books that had gender language focused on the protagonist and associated women with words of affection, school-related topics and verbs of communication, as you heard or explained. In the case of men, the associated words were related to transportation, professions and tools.
“Some of the stereotypes that have been studied in the social psychology literature are present in these books, such as that girls are good at reading and boys are good at math,” says Molly Lewis, lead researcher on the study, somewhat that worries that it is consolidated in the thinking of the little ones.
More gender stereotypes in short stories than in adult fiction
Another finding indicated that girls were more likely to be read stories with female protagonists than boys, and this makes boys more likely to learn about gender biases of their own gender than those that affect others. Furthermore, they found that these books had more gender-related stereotypes than fiction books intended for adults.
The stories showed more associations between women and language and the arts, while men were more related to mathematics
It was found that in books written for children under five there were many more associations between women and language and the arts, while men were more related to mathematics, something that appeared much less and in a more neutral way. in the case of adult literature.
“There is often a kind of learning cycle of gender stereotypes, where children learn stereotypes at a young age and then perpetuate them as they get older. These books can be a vehicle for communicating information about gender. Maybe we need to pay some attention to what those messages might be and whether they are messages that you even want to get across to kids,” suggests Lewis.
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