Browsing by Author "Anttila, Jaakko"

Previous research (McCabe et al., 2011; Kortenhaus & Demarest, 1993; DeWitt et al., 2013) indicates that gender roles in children’s picture books are portrayed in a stereotypical manner and that male characters outnumber female characters. The aim of this study is to find out how gender and gender roles are portrayed in children’s picture books from 1970s, 1980s and 2000s. I will examine the role models these books offer to children. In addition to that, I will try to find out whether or not the portrayal of gender roles has changed between the time periods in question. The theoretical foundation of the research lies in social constructionism. In this study gender is understood as a phenomenon that is formed in interaction with social and cultural environment. The material used in this study consisted of eight Nordic picture books. Four of them were from the 1970s and 1980s, and the other four from 2000s. All the books were in Finnish and they were sampled randomly from the Helsinki area libraries. In addition to the date of publication, the criteria for the sample was that the books have to be realistic children’s picture books and that both genders are portrayed in the book. The research method of this study was content analysis. I examined the material by summarizing and forming categories. I examined how gender roles are formed by language choices and depictions of the characters. I also tried to find out what kind of gender roles were typical for the books. I also counted the number of male and female characters in the books. Abductive reasoning was used in the examination of the material. According to the research female characters outnumbered male characters in books from 1970s, 1980s and 2000s. Characters’ features and clothes were depicted in a very stereotypical manner in all time periods. Gender roles were also stereotypical. Non-stereotypical depictions were associated only with father characters in both time periods and girls characters in the books from 2000s. Differences between the time periods were small. Looking at the big picture, one can say, that gender and gender roles were depicted in a very simple manner in the books that were studied.