Once upon a time ... Gender Stereotypes in Award Winning Children's Books
Event Title
Picturebooks and graphic narratives in education and translation: Mediation and multimodality
Year (definitive publication)
2021
Language
English
Country
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Abstract
This author would like to share the conclusions of her investigation on
award-winning children's books by SPA / RTP in the category of "Best
Children and Youth Book", which aimed to analyse gender stereotypes in
these books and inquire about the presence of gender concerns in the
requirements underlying their selection (Nunes, 2017). The conclusions
were in agreement with other international studies (Hamilton et al, 2006),
revealing a female underrepresentation and other gender inequalities in
dimensions such as hobbies, leisure time and household tasks, where rest
and "doing nothing" periods of the male characters contrast with the
cooking and cleaning chores of the female characters. Assuming that there
is no such thing as a “bad book” when it comes to relying on it to address
gender equality, this takes us to the important role of mediation, at its
different levels. Present from birth, or even before that, in the womb, books
are a privileged vehicle to learn about the world and about ourselves. In
their many teachings, books transmit values and ideologies, such as gender
and power relations, educating about men and women, who they are and
what they can do. Books can be important allies in different educational
contexts and it is imperative that we reflect on their contribution and also
the important role of the different mediators such as parents (Deloache,
Cassidy and Carpenter, 1987), educators, storytellers/
publishers/designers/authors/illustrators to use them to display diverse
role-models, challenge gender stereotypes and highlight the conquests we
have had in gender equality matters.
Acknowledgements
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Keywords
childrensliterature,genderstereotypes,awardedbooks