Flower-girl and bugler-boy no more: changing gender representation in writing for children

Abstract

Awareness of gender bias in the depiction of children has been well-established in educational circles since the 1970s, and robust attempts to address this bias have been made in many parts of the world. Corpus linguistics has, however, made a limited contribution to our understanding of this field, with early studies of the depiction of children in children's reading materials typically involving content analyses. Without challenging the tenor of their findings, questions of reliability and validity could be raised about a number of these studies. In this paper, I suggest that these questions can be managed using a corpus linguistic approach and I report on a diachronic investigation of changes in the depiction of gender roles in writing for children with materials published by the same publisher (the New Zealand School Journal) at thirty-year intervals throughout the twentieth century. My investigation confirms earlier findings to a considerable extent, but suggests changes in the depiction of children were occurring well before the 1970s. I also provide evidence to support claims that gender stereotyping has, largely, been successfully addressed in contemporary writing for children.