Browsing by Author "Wik, Elin"

The purpose of this study is to analyse how gender roles are portrayed in popular Finno-Swedish picture books from the 1980s and 2010s. Little research has been conducted to examine how characters are portrayed from a gender perspective in Finno-Swedish children’s litterature. The new regulations in early childhood education emphasise gender equality, which means that pedagogues need to be aware and critical towards children’s litterature, e.g. to create a more gender equal preschool culture. This qualitative study was carried out through text- and picture analysis of six popular Finno-Swedish picture books. Three books from the 1980s and three from the 2010s. The characters were analysed based on five pre-existing questions. The result indicates that Finno-Swedish picture books show a wide range of various attributes among the characters. The characters that are children are more gender neutral than the adults portrayed in the books. The female characters are the ones who changed most during these years. They show signs of a more explorative and active side, compared to the 1980s books. The male characters on the other hand, already show stereotypical female behaviour like thoughtfulness in the earlier books, and similar behaviour can also be seen among the male characters in the 2010s books. Hence, the male characters show a lesser degree of change than female characters from the 1980s to the 2010s.