Gender Bias
This unit is influenced by the Yale National Initiative (YNI) 2015 seminar, “Literature and Information”, such as the alertness I have formed regarding references to or connection with female characters having their own space and time, the use of color connotations around them, and how they are empowered.
On this literary journey to lay down a firm foundation of peace builder qualities, it will be interesting to explore student thoughts on how gender in children’s picture books can affect readers, especially young readers. How interesting it will be to observe the illustrations and text in picture books to see the gender roles, how they are portrayed, and positive characteristics. The books parents tend to read to young children are picture books. We are told, “children begin to distinguish between male and female during these young formative years prior to first grade.”6 Rich discussion could be sparked as students seek beyond identifying the female and male characters in illustration and text to analyzing the author’s intent for these characters. For example, we will be reading the fun story of Zog by Julia Donaldson. A strong female character is portrayed that does not seem to conform to expectations of her peers or society. We will use the two-page List of Character Traits, a free download from TeachersPayTeachers.com, to highlight peace builder traits we find in the story’s characters. (Please see Internet Resources for this link.)
Through research, I am reminded that we need to be selective in the literature we present to our students regarding gender bias. There are negative effects of the underrepresentation of female characters. It is suggested that it is limiting to girls’ aspirations for careers, in future parent role modeling, and in their personality characteristics as well as the perpetuation of any prior sexist biases they may have already had. It has been found that “Children who read biased books later made more stereotypic toy choices. Based on these and other studies, Tognoli, Pullen, and Lieber (1994) concluded that gender bias in children’s books gives boys a sense of entitlement and lowers girls’ self-esteem and occupational aspirations.”7 Also, in a study of 200 top selling books and Caldecott award winning titles, “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.”8
Keeping this data in mind motivates me to seek literature to combat these tendencies. For example, the book Amelia to Zora, by Cynthia Chin-Lee, is an A to Z book of twenty-six influential women with great character and accomplishments. Rosie Revere Engineer is a fiction book about a girl who learns about pursuing her engineering dreams with persistence, mentioning great women visionaries such as Bessie Coleman and Amelia Earhart, and explaining in the Historical Notes at the end the nod to Rosie the Riveter, the women’s figure of strength and contribution to war efforts during World War 2 with the slogan “We Can Do It”. I look forward to introducing students to high quality children’s books such as these that combat and help balance out gender bias tendencies.
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