How Gender Can Travel, or Not, through Children’s Books: A Comparison of Poland and the United States

Abstract

Previous research, mainly from the US, indicates that children’s literature is a powerful transmitter of gender roles. To better understand how ideas about gender found in children’s books cross national borders, travel within frontiers, and crash against obstacles that block the road to gender equality, this article compares the US and Poland in terms of children’s book publishing and scholarship. Whereas the US children’s book market is obviously larger, Poland’s internal market is large and growing enough to rely on its own, and thus acts as a barricade to repel ‘foreign’ gender norms. In the US, feminism has a strong tradition in children’s literature research; in Poland, by contrast and since 1989, feminism and the study of gender in children’s books have no strong tradition, and for the last eight years the government has openly discouraged progressive norms of gender equality. This article concludes with a call for cross-national comparative research on children’s books to provide insights into the facilitators and barriers to intercultural exchange of gender ideologies and national efforts to promote gender progressive ideals among young readers.