caring for other family members. The two parent characters in Not a Nibble! show the disparity in gender roles. The mother in the book is only seen in the kitchen, while the father appears in a self-directed role in which he takes the children fishing every day.
When it comes to representations of parenting, 59% of depictions involved female characters, compared to 21% for male characters and 20% for neuter. This category strongly reinforced the gender stereotype that parenting is a female business.
Feature
stereotyping This study also considered the following qualitative questions: do the books portray males and females in equally positive ways? Do they present an accurate representation of contemporary gender roles? Do they provide diverse gender roles for young readers’ gender construction? From the quantitative data, we can see how the characters are portrayed, and build a profile of each of the genders. Female characters are shown as central characters—as opposed to central protagonist—who are parenting and plain passive with an inner direction to their actions. Male characters are shown as protagonists and depicted as self-directed and initiators of action, whether constructive or destructive. When it comes to diverse gender roles, it’s interesting to note that ‘masculine traits’ are applauded in women. For example, the little girl in Not a Nibble! is shown to be persistent and successful when she finally catches a fish like the other boys. Men, however, are not depicted positively when they display ‘feminine’ behaviour. When boys are shown as caring, they are seen as weak. Characters like this appear in The Watertower, where a young boy helps his friend, but as a result is overwhelmed by a mysterious force. There are four mothers in the books, and they are all depicted in the kitchen at some point. Mirror, First Light, Jenny Angel and Not a Nibble all have mothers cooking or in the kitchen. Requiem for a Beast, The Arrival and The Two Bullies also have mothers and grandmothers in the family home for the duration of the book. In contrast, there is quite a wide range of possible masculine roles in this study. The diversity of masculine roles can be seen in the many professional positions they are depicted in throughout the books. There are 36 characters shown at work. Twenty-six of them are male, while only six are female and three are neuter. The Hero of Little Street shows many of these characters at work in the city, where you can see the imbalance of gender representation.
Conclusion
The Bechdel Test
Kate McKenzie is a graduate student of publishing and editing at the University of Melbourne
JUNIOR BOOKSELLER + PUBLISHER
The Bechdel Test is a test of female characterisation traditionally used on films. To pass the test, a film must satisfy three seemingly simple criteria: it must have two females with names, it must show them talking, and the topic of discussion must be something other than men. The test has been used to demonstrate the widespread trivialisation of women’s roles in cinema. I decided to apply this test on my sample of picture books. Only one book fulfilled all three criteria—Shaun Tan’s Tales from Outer Suburbia. However, if the genders were reversed, 10 books fulfilled the criteria.
Although gender stereotyping was present in this study, a larger sample size would be beneficial in a study such as this. It is a legitimate concern that a parent’s reading of neutral characters will be more biased towards male characters than was the author’s intention. If any proportion of the gender-neutral characters in this study were presented as male by a parent, the gender-bias would be heavily skewed towards male characters. The data in this study and other research reveals potentially powerful gender biases could be hidden within animal characters. The solution on the part of the author to gender-neutralise characters and allow readers to come to their own conclusions, as the DeLoach, Cassidy, and Carpenter study demonstrates, is unlikely to result in children being exposed to more female characters.
Issue 3 2012
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