Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Presence of Female Characters and Gender Stereotyping in...

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Sex Roles [sers] pp978-sers-472553 September 12, 2003 15:9 Style file version June 3rd, 2002

Sex Roles, Vol. 49, Nos. 9/10, November 2003 ( C© 2003)

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Presenceof Female Characters and Gender Stereotypingin Award-Winning Picture Books Betweenthe 1930s and the 1960s

Roger Clark,1,2 Jessica Guilmain,1 Paul Khalil Saucier,1 and Jocelyn Tavarez1

Since the late 1960s, there has been steady, progressive change in the depiction ofgender in award-winning picture books for children (e.g., Clark, Almeida, Gurka, &Middleton, 2003). Female characters in Caldecott winners and runners-up have become in-creasingly visible and gender stereotyping has become decreasingly evident. In this articlewe consider whether this steady change can be projected back into the decades before the1960s, or whether local, temporal variation in gender norms affected less monotonic change.We found that Caldecotts of the late 1940s and the late 1960s had fewer visible female charac-ters than Caldecotts of the late 1930s and the late 1950s, but that characters in the 1940s and1960s were less gender stereotyped than the characters of the 1930s and 1950s. We interpretthese findings in terms of the greater level of conflict over gender roles that existed in the1940s and 1960s, as well as the relatively greater status enjoyed by American women in thosedecades.

KEY WORDS: children’s books; visibility of female characters; gender stereotyping.

It has been just over three decades sinceWeitzman, Eifler, Hokada, and Ross (1972) producedtheir classic study on gender role socialization in chil-dren’s books. Weitzman et al.’s primary focus was onwinners and runners-up of the Caldecott Medal (themost prestigious award for children’s picture books),especially those selected during the 5 years from 1967to 1971. Their major finding was that American pic-ture books for preschoolers depicted male and femalecharacters in stereotyped ways and that they hardlyshowed female characters at all. Weitzman et al. sug-gested that both the stereotyping of all characters andthe relative invisibility of female characters taughtyoung readers an important lesson about the relative

1Department of Sociology, Rhode Island College, Providence,Rhode Island.

2To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department ofSociology, Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island 02908;e-mail: [email protected].

worth of boys and girls in American society: that “boysare more highly valued than girls” (p. 1125).

Weitzman et al. sparked a series of follow-upstudies of feminist research into the gender con-tent and effects of children’s books. By 2003, nofewer that 22 research teams (Ashton, 1983; Clark,Almeida, Gurka, & Middleton, 2003; Clark, Lennon,& Morris, 1993; Davis, 1984; Gooden & Gooden, 2001;Grauerholz & Pescosolido, 1989; Jennings, 1975;Knopp, 1980; Koblinsky, Cruse, & Sugawar, 1978;Kolke & LaVoie, 1981; Kropp & Halverston, 1983;Lutes-Dunckley, 1978; Ochman, 1996; Peirce &Edwards, 1988; Peterson & Navy, 1990; Purcell &Stewart, 1990; St. Peter, 1979; Sugino, 2000; Tepper& Cassidy, 1999; Turner-Bowker, 1996; White, 1985;Williams, Vernon, Williams, & Malecha, 1987) had di-rectly followed in their footsteps in one way or an-other. It has even been plausibly argued that thesestudies have had some effect on the kinds of booksthat have been chosen to be award winners (see

439 0360-0025/03/1100-0439/0 C© 2003 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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440 Clark, Guilmain, Saucier, and Tavarez

Clark, Kulkin, & Clancy, 1999). Clark, Lennon, andMorris (1993) reported that Caldecott winners andrunners-up between 1987 and 1991 made female char-acters more visible and less stereotyped than wasthe case in their 1967–1971 counterparts. Clark et al.(2003) reported that winners and runners-up be-tween 1997 and 2001 had even more visible and less-stereotyped female characters than the 1987–1991group did.

The Caldecott Medal was first awarded in 1938,and one may well wonder whether the trend of in-creasing visibility of female characters and decreas-ing stereotyping in award-winning books is safely ex-trapolated backward in time. Our goal in this studyhas been to examine this possibility by looking againat award-winners and runners-up from the late 1960s(1967–71) and at their counterparts in the late 1950s(1957–61), the late 1940s (1947–51), and the late 1930s(1938–42).3

Competing Perspectives

We came to our study with two competing sets ofexpectations. On the one hand, we thought it possible,perhaps likely, that we would find decreasing visibil-ity of female characters and ever more gender stereo-typing as we examined older and older Caldecotts.First, there were the trends of the recent decades.Clark et al. (2003) had found, for instance, that thepercentage of Caldecotts without female charactershad decreased from 33% in the late 1960s to 25% inthe late 1980s to 15% in the late 1990s. Moreover,using standards that we will describe in our methodsection below, they found that whereas female andmale characters tended to be portrayed in stereotyp-ical fashion in the 1960s, they were much less stereo-typically portrayed by the late 1980s, and tended tobe portrayed in reverse stereotypical fashion by thelate 1990s. For example, Clark et al. (2003) found thatlate-1960s female characters were much more likelyto be depicted as nurturant than were their male coun-terparts, whereas male characters were slightly morelikely than female characters to be depicted as nurtu-rant in the late 1990s.

In addition to the empirical evidence from whichone might have extrapolated a straight-line trend be-tween the late 1960s and the late 1990s back to the

3Because the Caldecott was first awarded in 1938, we were unableto investigate winners from 1937 to 1941 and so chose the winnersfrom the period 1938 to 1942 instead.

past, there are some interpretations of that trend thatalso accord with such an extrapolation. One such in-terpretation, based upon the reasoning of Weitzmanet al. (1972), is that the portrayal of gender in chil-dren’s picture books reflects other long-term socioe-conomic and cultural trends in the relative valueplaced upon men and women in American society.One need only add the observation that women’s ac-cess to education, the polity, and the economy has gen-erally proceeded in a more-or-less monotonic fashionin the last century, then, to justify a belief that thedepiction of gender in children’s picture books willalso have been subject to a more-or-less monotonicprogression.

Almost as soon as we had laid out this expec-tation, however, we found ourselves drawn more andmore to the adverb “more-or-less” and less and less tothe adjective “monotonic.” Pescosolido, Grauerholz,and Milkie (1997), after all, had found that the ap-pearance and portrayal of Black characters in chil-dren’s picture books varied with social and politi-cal forces in the twentieth century. During periodsof racial conflict (notably during the 1950s and early1960s), Black characters virtually disappeared fromchildren’s books. Could conflict over gender roleshave had similar effects on the appearance of femalecharacters in children’s books? Could conflict overgender roles and the relative value placed on men andwomen in society (clearly distinguishable concepts)affect different aspects of the portrayal of gender inchildren’s picture books? Could it be, for instance,that conflict in society over gender roles decreasesthe visibility of female characters, whereas increasesin the relative value of women decrease the amount ofgender stereotyping? And has there been enough lo-cal variation in prevailing gender norms and conflictsby decade in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s to havegenerated significant variation from the onward andupward trend toward the depiction of gender equalityin children’s books of the final three decades of thecentury? We thought, perhaps, that the answer to allof these questions might be affirmative.

In particular, we wondered whether, because theGreat Depression is associated with a degradation inwomen’s relative status in the public sphere,4 late-1930s Caldecotts might have tended to depict menand women in traditional roles. We also speculated

4Rowbotham (1997), for instance, observed that economic hard-ship “reawakened antagonism to married women working”(p. 203) and led the New Deal administration to focus on men’semployment.

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Gender Stereotyping in Award-Winning Picture Books 441

about the possibility that, because the Depression ac-tually diminished conflict over women’s roles, it mayhave led to relatively high levels of female-charactervisibility. We wondered whether women’s greater ac-cess to the public sphere in the 1940s, particularly dur-ing World War II, might have led to a more egalitar-ian portrayal of gender in late-1940s children’s books.But we thought it possible that the implicit conflictover women’s roles, especially during the late 1940s,may have led to relatively few female characters in thebooks. Because the 1950s were a time when traditionalgender roles prevailed in the larger society, and whenthere was relatively little conflict over gender roles,we hypothesized that Caldecotts may again have de-picted men and women in conventional stereotypedways and contained more female characters. Finally,we wondered whether incipient Second Wave femi-nist struggles during the 1960s might not have con-tributed to at least marginally less stereotyping in pic-ture books for this decade, at least in comparison withearlier decades, as well as fewer female characters.

Consequently, we approached our data with twocompeting hypotheses, one of which we dub the“monotonic change” (or MC) hypothesis and theother which we call the “local variation” (LV) hy-pothesis. The MC hypothesis holds that books in laterdecades will generally have more female charactersand less gender stereotyping of their characters thanbook in earlier decades. The LV hypothesis holds thatbooks from the late 1930s and the late 1950s will havemore female characters but more gender stereotypingthan books from the late 1940s and the late 1960s.

METHOD

For the current project, we closely examined the20 Caldecott winners and runners-up from 1938 to1942, the 28 from 1947 to 1951, the 18 from 1957 to1961, and the 18 from 1967 to 1971. (See AppendixA for the books analyzed.) We reexamined the lattergroup, the 18 from 1967 to 1971, even though it hadpreviously been studied by Weitzman et al. (1972) andClark et al. (1993), to make sure that the same readers(the four coauthors) applied the same standards to thebooks of all four time periods.

One reason for focusing on Caldecott winners isthe unusual influence these books have had on tastesfor children’s literature. The Caldecott is not onlythe most prestigious award for preschool literature,but it also guarantees its winners phenomenal sales(Clark, 1992). The Caldecott Medal is awarded annu-

ally by the Caldecott Committee of the Associationfor Library Services to Children (ALSC), a divisionof the American Library Association. The 15 mem-bers of this Committee each year must be members ofthe ALSC, and all will have distinguished themselveswithin this Association for their skills at evaluatingchildren’s books (e.g., Fader, 1999). It is thereforepossible that members of the Caldecott committeeare more responsive to social change than are otherarbiters of popular books for children, such as thepublishers of Golden Books.

Here we briefly outline how we measured boththe visibility of female characters and the degree ofgender stereotyping in the books we have examined.Following Weitzman et al. (1972) and Clark et al.(1993), we measured visibility of female charactersin terms of four indicators: the percentage of books ineach period that have no female characters, the per-centage with a central female character, the percent-age of human single-gender illustrations that depictgirls or women, and the percentage of single-sex ani-mal illustrations that depict females.

Weitzman et al. (1972) failed to specify how theymeasured the degree of gender-stereotyping in theCaldecotts they studied. As Clark et al. (1993) didbefore, we relied on Davis’ refined set of variablesfor dealing with 15 kinds of gender-related behavior(Davis, 1994; see the Appendix B for variable def-initions). Given these variable traits, we posit thatmainstream gender stereotyping entails the expecta-tion that female characters will be more dependent,cooperative, submissive, imitative, nurturant, emo-tional, and passive and that they will be less indepen-dent, competitive, directive, persistent, explorative,creative, aggressive, and active than male characters.

In general, we coded whether each of four pos-sible characters in each book possessed a given trait(e.g., dependence). We analyzed the book’s centralcharacter, the most important character of the samesex, and the two most important characters of theother sex, where supporting characters were deemedsufficiently visible for analysis. In many books, we ex-amined fewer than four characters (sometimes as fewas zero) because there simply weren’t four charac-ters about which we were given adequate informa-tion to do our analysis. In rare cases, such as Lawson’sThey Were Strong and Good, where there were obvi-ously five equally central characters (Lawson, 1940),we dealt with more than four characters (in this case,five). If three or four of us independently decided thata character possessed a trait, we accorded this trait tothe character. If three or four failed to see a trait,

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Table I. Visibility of Female Characters in Caldecott Winners andRunners-Up

1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s

Total number 20 28 18 18of booksPercent without 0% 22% 11% 33%female charactersa

Percent with 45% 14% 39% 17%central femalecharactersb

Human single-gender illustrationsTotal number 335 508 163 196Percent with 24% 16% 40% 10%

female charactersc

Nonhuman single-sex illustrationsTotal number 190 130 101 119Percent femaled 19% 20% 10% 1%

aDifferences between 1930s and 1940s books, significant at .03level; between 1930s and 1960s books, at .01 level; between 1940sand 1950s books, at .11 level. No other differences statisticallysignificant.

bDifferences between 1930s and 1940s books, significant at .02 level;between 1930 and 1960s books, at .06 level, between 1940s and1950s books, at .06 level; between 1950s and 1960s books, at .14level. No other differences close to being significant.

cAll differences significant at .05 level.dDifferences between 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s books, significant at.05 level. Differences between 1930s and 1940s books, not statis-tically significant.

we decided that the trait did not exist in the charac-ter. If there was a tie (with two of us seeing the traitand two not seeing it), we assigned a missing valueto the character for that trait, and the character wasdeleted in analysis of that trait. Overall, the four of usexamined 133 characters and obtained an overall in-tercoder or interrater reliability of 88%; agreementsvaried between 80% (for emotionality) and 99% (foractiveness).

We determined the statistical significance of per-centage differences by calculating chi-square statis-tics. In the case of all four visibility indicators (e.g., per-centage of books with female characters), we lookedat six differences: between the 1930s and the 1940s,1950s and 1960s, first; between the 1940s, 1950s, and1960s, next; and between the 1950s and 1960s, last.Summaries of these analyses are presented in notesat the bottom of Table I. In the case of all 15 behav-ioral traits, we examined differences between the per-centage of male and female characters who possessedeach trait (e.g., dependence) for each decade.

RESULTS

Our analysis showed almost no support for themonotonic change (MC) hypothesis in the decades

before the 1960s. It provided much more support forthe local variation (LV) hypothesis. Our results follow,decade by decade.

The 1930s

As shown in Table I, female characters of thelate 1930s were more visible than those in any otherdecade. All of the 1930s books included a female char-acter, and 45% included a central female character.Girls or women were shown in 24% of human single-gender illustrations, and female animals were shownin 19% of the animal single-sex illustrations.

Weitzman et al. (1972) and Clark et al. (1993,2003) have traced a pattern in which the presenceof female characters is associated with low gender-stereotyping in Caldecotts between the 1960s and the1990s. But despite the high visibility of female char-acters in 1930s Caldecotts, we found (see Table II)that there is a good deal of gender stereotyping inthem. Female characters were more dependent, sub-missive, imitative, nurturant, emotional, and passivelyactive than male characters. Male characters, on theother hand, were more independent, competitive, di-rective, persistent, explorative, aggressive, and activethan female characters. Male and female charactersevinced roughly the same levels of creativity and co-operativeness. Of the 15 traits we examined, 13 weremore likely to be found in characters of the stereo-typically appropriate gender in the 1930s, and 2 wereabout equally likely to be found in male and femalecharacters, which makes the 1930s the decade in whichwe found the greatest amount of gender stereotypingin Caldecott winners and runners-up. Although thestereotyping is consistent with our MC hypothesis, thedegree of visibility of female characters is not.

As might be expected during the tumultuous1930s, there was a considerable amount of reach-ing back to traditional American and Western sto-ries and myths in the list of 1930s Caldecotts. Everyyear brought its very large (by more recent picturebook standards) volumes, with traditional themes:Fish and Lawson’s Four and Twenty Blackbirds (Fish& Lawson, 1937), Fish and Lathrop’s Animals ofthe Bible: A Picture Book (Fish & Lathrop, 1937),Gag’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Gag, 1938),Daugherty’s Andy and the Lion (Daugherty, 1938),the D’Aulaires’ Abraham Lincoln (D’Aulaires &D’Aulaires, 1939), Lawson’s They Were Strong andGood (Lawson, 1940), and the Petershams’ TheAmerican ABC (Petersham & Petersham, 1941). Thecharacters in these books were likely to be gender

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Table II. Percentage of Characters Exhibiting Behavioral Traits by Gender or Sex

Late-1930s Late-1940s Late-1950s Late-1960s

Male Female Male Female Male Female Male FemaleTraits characters characters characters characters characters characters characters characters

Dependent 24 62 S∗ 26 54 S 11 50 S 37 29 RIndependent 90 70 S 93 90 T 100 80 S 88 83 TCooperative 81 85 T 83 69 R 87 92 T 79 100 SCompetitive 36 27 S 30 30 T 42 8 S 18 17 TDirective 48 27 S 36 44 R 46 27 S 59 57 TSubmissive 25 50 S 15 0 R 8 27 S 0 0 TPersistent 90 50 S∗ 78 85 R 85 67 S 73 60 SExplorative 85 46 S∗ 83 43 S∗ 36 50 R 66 33 SCreative 58 57 T 52 33 S 64 36 S 40 80 RImitative 8 15 S 18 8 R 0 0 T 0 0 TNurturant 43 75 S 44 75 S 33 73 S∗ 56 71 SAggressive 35 23 S 17 21 T 13 0 S 27 14 SEmotional 63 92 S 54 67 S 60 57 T 79 50 RActive 100 92 S 100 85 S 100 100 T 100 100 TPassively active 90 100 S 100 85 R 100 100 T 100 100 T

Note. ∗indicates the difference between male and female characters is significant at the .05 level; S indicates that the difference is inthe stereotypical direction; R indicates that the difference is in the reverse stereotypical direction; T indicates that there’s essentiallyno difference (less than a 5% difference) between males and females (i.e., that there is a tie).

stereotyped. Lawson’s family history, They WereStrong and Good, for instance, features three extraor-dinarily active men and three extraordinarily passivewomen. (One of these women is so nearly invisiblethat we couldn’t code her in our analysis of genderstereotyping. There just wasn’t enough informationabout her.) By virtue of their length, if nothing else,however, such books could hardly have excluded fe-male characters altogether. There are some fascinat-ing exceptions to the “traditional Western story” ruleamong the late-1930s Caldecotts. Modern classics,which “happened” to focus on female characters, suchas McCluskey’s Make Way for Ducklings (McCluskey,1941) and Bemelman’s Madeline (Bemelman, 1939),were honored, and they introduced independent andnonsubmissive female characters. Similarly, interestis shown in Native Americans (through the acknowl-edgement of books such as Holling’s, Paddle-to-the-Sea; Holling, 1941, and Clark & Herrera’s, In MyMother’s House; Clark & Herrera, 1941) and Chinese(Handforth’s, Mei Li; Handforth, 1938). Some ofthese books, such as Mei Li, featured surprisingly ac-tive female characters. On the whole, though, late-1930s Caldecotts featured a good deal of genderstereotyping.

The 1940s

As Table I indicates, we found that female char-acters in Caldecotts of the late 1940s were more visiblethan they were in the late-1960s Caldecotts, but less

visible than they were in either the late 1930s or thelate 1950s. Fully 22% of 1940s books had no femalecharacters, and only 15% had a central female char-acter. Only 16% of the human single-gender illustra-tions on late-1940s Caldecotts were of girls or women,and only 20% of animal single-sex illustrations wereof females.

If the visibility of female characters were indi-rectly associated with gender stereotyping, as it is forthe Caldecotts from late 1960s to the late 1990s, onewould expect considerable gender stereotyping in thelate 1940s books, but this is not the case. In fact, con-sistent with the LV hypothesis, the late-1940s Calde-cotts exhibited less gender stereotyping than thoseof any other decade we examined. For, although fe-male characters in these books remained (as they werein the 1930s) substantially more dependent, less ex-plorative, more nurturant, and more emotional thanmale characters, they were just as independent, com-petitive, and aggressive as male characters, and lesscooperative, more directive, less submissive, less im-itative, and more persistent than their male counter-parts. Are we seeing the remnants here of the egali-tarian spirit that Rosie the Riveter embodied duringWorld War II?

Probably not. But we probably are seeing signsof ambivalence on the part of authors, publishers, andaward-givers, about gender roles. One does, of course,find some very traditional, martial male charactersin Malcolmson and Burton’s Song of Robin Hood(Malcolmson & Burton, 1947) and Holbrook and

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Ward’s America’s Ethan Allen (Holbrook & Ward,1949). But there is a notable turning away from adulthuman society and its troubles in these books. Read-ers were exposed to the zany, masculine world ofDr Seuss in McElligot’s Pool, If I Ran the Zoo, andBartholomew and the Oobleck (Seuss, 1947, 1949,1950). Mainly, however, children got books aboutnature, animals, and children: 20 of the 27 award-winning books focused on either nature, animals, orchildren. Not infrequently the books were simultane-ously about nature, animals, and children, as they arein McCluskey’s Blueberries for Sal (McCluskey, 1948)and Davis and Woodward’s The Wild Birthday Cake(Davis & Woodward, 1949). And children and animalsare relatively easily forgiven minor transgressions ofgender boundaries. Thus, Sal, out picking blueberrieswith Mom, can be explorative and persistent, and shedoes not need to be at all nurturant, and Johnny (inThe Wild Birthday Cake) can develop a cooperativerelationship with his 75-year-old mentor, the Profes-sor, be submissive to him, and be nurturant (of ani-mals). But there are no Rosies here. In fact, if one findsa working and assertive adult female, as one does inBrown’s Dick Whittington and His Cat (Brown, 1950),she’s likely to be an abusive servant (who is most un-appealingly directive, aggressive, and nonnurturant)or a mouse-killing cat.

Thus, although one can argue that the late-1940sCaldecotts do provide support for the LV hypothesis,we found little evidence that they might have reflectedan egalitarian Zeitgeist borne of war. On the contrary,it seems more likely that these books reflected somecombination of a confusion about gender norms, anexhaustion with wartime preoccupations of all sorts,and perhaps a fear of being labeled too liberal or even“communist.” (Joseph McCarthy was elected to theSenate in 1946 and began his anticommunist hear-ings the next year.) There were, to be sure, some safe,“manly” men, but there were even more nearly-as-safe children and animals. If there had to be an as-sertive woman, her assertiveness was made to lookunappealing.

The 1950s

We found that female characters were less visi-ble in the Caldecotts of the late 1950s than they werein the 1930s, but that they were more visible in the1950s than they were in Caldecotts of the 1940s orthe 1960s. Only 11% of the 1950s books had no fe-male character and fully 39% had a central female

character. Forty percent of the human single-genderillustrations in the late-1950s Caldecotts were of girlsor women. The only indicator on which we found rela-tively low female-character visibility among the 1950sCaldecotts was for animal single-sex illustrations: only10% of these were of females.

Female visibility in 1950s Caldecotts was secondonly to its counterpart in 1930s Caldecotts, and theamount of gender-stereotyping was also second onlyto that found in the 1930s books (see Table II). Fe-male characters were more dependent, submissive,and nurturant than male characters, and were less in-dependent, competitive, persistent, explorative, cre-ative, and aggressive. In a minor reversal of conven-tional stereotypes, they were slightly more likely tobe explorative than their male counterparts. Typicalof the 1950s books are two in the series about Anatolethe mouse, Anatole and Anatole and the Cat, by Titusand Galdone (1956, 1957). In these books, the en-terprising and creative Anatole makes his fortune inFrance’s cheese industry, whereas his wife, Duchette,keeps a fine mouse-house and minds the children, i.e.,the little mice. The amount of gender stereotyping wefound in late-1950s books is very consistent with aview that these books reflected the “separate spheres”ethos of the decade.

The 1960s

The results of our examination of the 1960sCaldecotts are consistent with those of Weitzmanet al.’s study, at least insofar as we also find consider-able evidence of the invisibility of female characters(see Table I). We found that fully 33% of the bookshad no female characters, and only 17% had a centralfemale character. Moreover, only 10% of all single-gender human illustrations in these books were, byour count, of girls or women, and only a miniscule0.8% of single-sex animal illustrations were of fe-males. On all visibility dimensions, then, late-1960sCaldecotts were outstanding for their capacity to keepfemale characters invisible.

On the other hand, though, we did not find asmuch gender stereotyping in the 1960s Caldecotts asWeitzman et al. apparently did. In fact, we found thesebooks to be the second-least (to the 1940s books)stereotyped of the ones we examined in this study.Female characters were more cooperative and nurtu-rant and less persistent, explorative, and aggressivethan their male counterparts, as one would expect bystereotype, but they were also less dependent, morecreative, and less emotional. On 7 of the 15 dimen-

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sions (e.g., independence), male and female charac-ters had the focal trait in approximately equal mea-sure. Preston and Parker’s eponymous characters inPop Corn and Ma Goodness worked together at build-ing a house and did essentially the same kinds of work(Preston & Parker, 1969).

The invisibility of female characters during the1960s does not seem to be as clearly a reflection ofauthors’ and award-givers’ avoidance of adult hu-man society (through a focus on children and ani-mals) as it did in the 1940s. Late-1960s books, in fact,seem to reflect the kind of social consciousness onemight have expected from a decade of liberationistsocial movements; however, they do not focus on thewomen’s movement directly. Retellings of folktalesfrom “other” societies abound and constitute the basisfor Yashimo’s Seashore Story (Japan; Yashimo, 1967),Dayrell and Lent’s Why the Sun and the Moon Live inthe Sky (Africa; Dayrell & Lent, 1968), Ransome andShulevitz’s The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship(Russia; Ransome & Shulevitz, 1968), Sleator andLent’s The Angry Moon (Native America; Sleator &Lent, 1970), Haley’s A Story, A Story (Africa; Haley,1970), and Yolen and Young’s The Emperor and theKite (China; Yolen & Young, 1967). We also foundamong honored books Keats’ Goggles! (Keats, 1969),the story of two African American boys pursued byan urban gang. None of these books, except for TheEmperor and the Kite, has a central female charac-ter, but none is reminiscent of the nature books ofthe late 1940s for their avoidance of adult humansociety either. Some of the absence of female char-acters, however, seems to reflect the Caldecott com-mittee’s interest in male-centered animal stories, asin Lionni’s Frederick (about a mouse; Lionni, 1967),Lionni’s Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse (about amouse; Lionni, 1969), Steig’s Sylvester and the MagicPebble (about a donkey; Steig, 1969), and Lobel’s Frogand Toad were Friends (about a frog and a toad; Lobel,1970), many of which are Aesop-like fables designedto convey moral lessons to young readers.

DISCUSSION

We began our investigation of Caldecott award-winners and runners-up from the late-1930s, late-1940s, late-1950s, and late-1960s with competingexpectations. On the one hand, on the basis of a lit-erature that suggests that female characters have be-come more visible and that gender-stereotyping hasbecome less apparent in such books since the 1960s,we thought it possible that we would find greater

invisibility of female characters and more gender-stereotyping farther back in time. We called this ourmonotonic change (MC) hypothesis. On the otherhand, we thought it possible that the depiction ofgender in such books might vary with the more gen-eral attitudes about gender in a particular decade.This was our local variation (LV) hypothesis. Over-all, we found more support for the LV than for theMC hypothesis.

The MC hypothesis was undermined, in part, bythe complete absence of a negative correlation be-tween the presence of female characters and gen-der stereotyping between the late 1930s and the late1960s. Unlike what seems to occur (see, for instance,Clark et al., 1993, 2003) in award-winners betweenthe late 1960s and the late 1990s, when the presenceof female characters and gender stereotyping werenegatively correlated, we found that they were posi-tively correlated between the late 1930s and the late1960s. In the 1930s and 1950s, when female characterswere present in relatively great numbers in Calde-cott winners and runners-up, gender stereotyping wasmost prevalent. In the 1940s and 1960s, when femalecharacters were present in relatively small numbers,gender stereotyping, at least as we measured it, wasleast obvious. The considerable presence of femalecharacters in 1930s and 1950s Caldecotts may havehad slightly different origins in the two decades. Thepresence of female characters in the books of the1930s results, in part, from the fact that the Calde-cott committee honored much longer books then thanit has in later decades. Longer books, particularlythose with multiple stories (such as books of Biblestories), are simply more likely to include femalecharacters, even central female characters, some-where. The presence of female characters in 1950sbooks, on the other hand, seems to reflect at leasta partial focus on domestic life, the realm in which“women” were expected to be present. The Ana-tole books (about a mouse and his supportive wife),Yashimo’s Umbrella (Yashimo, 1958), Freeman’s FlyHigh, Fly Low (Freeman, 1957), LaBastida andEts’ Nine Days to Christmas (LaBastida & Ets,1959), and Frasconi’s The House that Jack Built(Frasconi, 1958), are all books that give at least di-vided attention to domestic matters. In any case, theauthors of 1930s and 1950s award winners seem tohave had no problem writing about female characters.

The MC hypothesis was also challenged by thenonlinear pattern in gender stereotyping that oc-curred by decade between the late 1930s and the late1960s. The most “deviant” decade is the 1940s, when

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stereotyping reached its lowest point over the period,a decade in which, given the 15 traits we examined,male and female characters evinced stereotyped be-havior on 6 traits, reversed stereotyped behavior on6 traits, and similar behavior on 3 traits. We thought itpossible, as expressed in our LV hypothesis, that thelate-1940s Caldecotts might evince less stereotypingthan those of the late 1930s and the late 1950s, but ourreasoning behind this expectation was not borne out.Much of the nonstereotyped behavior in these bookscame from children, such as Sal in Blueberries for Saland Johnny in The Wild Birthday Cake, who wereput into settings where minor transgressions of gen-der boundaries are easily tolerated. We were so struckby the socially-acceptable transgressions of these chil-dren, in fact, that we encourage future researchers todo what we failed to do: analyze the differences in theways adults and children are stereotyped by genderin children’s books more generally. In fact, though,there seems to be a turning away from the concernsof adult society in the books selected by the Caldecottcommittee of the late 1940s, which led us to wonderwhether the committee (and perhaps authors) had be-come anxious in light of the political and social con-servatism of that particular part of the decade.

Our examination of Caldecott winners andrunners-up from the late 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960sprovided support for the view that the gender rela-tions depicted in award-winning picture books aremore likely to reflect local, temporal variations in gen-der norms than to express a long-term trend towardincreasing the increasing visibility of female charac-ters and decreasing gender stereotyping. One implica-tion of our findings is that gender stereotyping and thepresence of female characters in award-winning pic-ture books for children may reflect different aspects ofgender relations in society: that they may not both, asWeitzman et al.’s classic study (Weitzman et al., 1972)suggested, be functions of the relative status of menand women, and of boys and girls, in society. Gen-der stereotyping may well reflect the relative status ofwomen between the late 1930s and the late 1960s. Thesteady decrease in the amount of gender stereotypingfound in Caldecott winners and runners-up since the1960s may, then, reflect increases in women’s statusduring the period. The visibility (or invisibility) of fe-male characters, on the other hand, may well reflectthe degree of conflict over women’s roles in society inthe decades we examined. Consequently, we specu-late that the increasing visibility of female charactersin books since the 1960s may reflect decreases in thedegree of conflict over such roles since then.

Another implication of our work is that the“trend” toward such visibility and decreased stereo-typing cannot be taken for granted and probably re-flects real gains in public consciousness, as well as theconsciousness of the award committee, about the im-portance of gender-egalitarian displays in children’smedia. Antifeminist backlash in other media (see,for instance, hooks, 1997, on film) suggests that sucha trend is reversible. Our data from the first fourdecades of Caldecott awards suggest that, under thewrong circumstances, the current 30-year trend to-ward less stereotyped displays and more visibility offemale characters in children’s award-winning picturebooks is also potentially reversible.

APPENDIX A: BOOKS ANALYZED

Armer, L. A. (1938). The forest pool. Logmans.Artzybasheff, B. (1937). Seven Simeons: A Russian

tale. Viking.Bemelmans, L. (1939). Madeline. Viking.Brown, M. (1949). Henry Fisherman. ScribnerBrown, M. (1950). Dick Whittington and his cat.

Scribner.Brown, M. (1947). Stone soup. ScribnerBrown, M. W., & Weisgard, L. (1946). The little island.

Doubleday.Clark, A. N., & Herrera, V. (1941). In my mother’s

house. Viking.Cooney, B. (1958). Chanticleer and the fox. Crowell.Daugherty, J. (1938). Andy and the lion. Viking.Davis, L. R., & Woodward, H. (1947). Roger and the

fox. Doubleday.Davis, L. R., & Woodward, H. (1949). The wild birth-

day cake. Doubleday.Dayrell, E., & Lent, B. (1968). Why the sun and the

moon live in the sky. Houghton.Elkin, B., & Daugherty, J. (1956). Gillespie and the

guards. Viking.Emberley, B., & Emberley, E. (1966). One wide river

to cross. Prentice-Hall.Emberley, B., & Emberley, E. (1967). Drummer Hoff.

Prentice-Hall.Ets, M., H., & Labastida, A. (1959). Nine days to

Christmas. Viking.Ets, M., H. (1956). Mr. Penny’s race horse. Viking.Fish, H. D., & Lathrop, D. P. (1937). Animals of the

Bible, A picture book. Lippincott.Fish, H. D., & Lawson, R. (1937). Four and twenty

blackbirds. Stokes.Flack, M., Banum, J. H. (1946). Boats on the river.

Viking.

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Ford, L. (1939). The ageless story. Dodd.Frasconi, A. (1958). The house that Jack built.

Harcourt.Freeman, D. (1957). Fly high, fly low. Viking.Gag, W. (1938). Snow White and the seven dwarfs.

CowardGag, W. (1941). Nothing at all. Coward.Geisel, T. S. (1950). If I ran the zoo. Random House.Goudey, A., & Adams, A. (1959). Houses from the

sea. Scribner.Graham, A., & Palazzo, T. (1946). Timothy turtle.

Welch.Hader, B., & Hader, E. (1939). Cock-a-doodle doo.

Macmillan.Hadforth, T. (1938). Mei Li. Doubleday.Haley, G. E. (1970). A story, a story. Doubleday.Holbrook, S., & Ward, L. (1949). America’s Ethan

Allen. Houghton.Holling, H. C. (1941). Paddle-to-the-sea. Houghton.Joslin, S., & Sendak, M. (1958). What do you say dear?

W.R. Scott.Keats, E. J. (1969). Goggles. Macmillan.Krauss, R., & Simont, M. (1949). The happy day.

Harper.Lawson, R. (1940). They were strong and good.

Viking.Leaf, M., & Lawson, R. (1938). Wee Gillis. Viking.Lionni, L. (1960). Inch by inch. Obolensky.Lionni, L. (1967). Frederick. Pantheon.Lionni, L. (1969). Alexander and the wind-up mouse.

Pantheon.Lipkind, W., & Mordvinoff, N. (1950). The two reds.

Harcourt.Lobel, A. (1970). Frog and toad are friends.

Harper.Malcomson, A., & Burton, V. L. (1947). Song of Robin

Hood. Houghton.McCloskey, R. (1941). Make way for ducklings.

Viking.McCloskey, R. (1948). Blueberries for Sal. Viking.McGinley, P., & Stone, H. (1948). All around the town.

Lippincott.McGinley, P., & Stone, H. (1950). The most wonderful

doll in the world. Lippincott.Mihous, K. (1950). The egg tree. Scribner.Ness, E. (1966). Sam, Bangs and Moonshine. Holt.Newberry, C. T. (1938). Barkis. Harper.Newberry, C. T. (1940). April’s kittens. Harper.Newberry, C. T. (1950). T-bone, the baby sitter. Harper.Parin d’Aulaire, I., & Parin d’Aulaire, E. (1939). Abra-

ham Lincoln. Doubleday.Pene du Bois, W. (1956). Lion. Viking.

Petersham, M., & Petersham, M. (1941). An AmericanABC. MacMillan.

Politi, L. (1946). Pedro, the angel of Olvera street.Scribner.

Politi, L. (1948). Juanita. Scribner.Politi, L. (1949). Song of the swallows. Scribner.Preston, E. M., & Parker, R. A. (1969). Pop Corn &

Ma Goodness. Viking.Ransome, A., & Shulevitz, U. (1968). The fool of the

world and the flying ship. Farrar.Robbins, R., & Sidjakov, N. (1960). Babouska and the

three kings. Parnassus.Schrieber, G. (1947). Bambino the clown. Viking.Sendak, M. (1970). In the night kitchen. Harper.Seuss, D. (1947). McElligot’s Pool. Random House.Seuss, D. (1949). Bartholomew and the oobleck.

Random House.Sleater, W., & Lent. B. (1970). The angry moon.

Atlantic.Steig, W. (1969). Sylvester and the magic pebble.

Windmill Books.Titus, E., & Galdone, P. (1956). Anatole. McGraw-

Hill.Titus, E., & Galdone, P. (1957). Anatole and the cat.

McGraw-Hill.Tresselt, A., & Weisgard, L. (1946). Rain drop splash.

Lothrop.Tresselt, A., & Duvoisin, R. (1947). White snow, bright

snow. Lothrop.Tudor, T., (1956). 1 is one. Walck.Turkle, B. (1969). Thy friend, Obadiah. Viking.Udry, J., & Simont., M. (1956). A tree is nice.

Harper.Udry, J. M., & Sendak, M. (1959). The moon jumpers.

Harper.Wheeler, O., & Torrey, M. (1946). A collection of the

best loved hymns. Dutton.Wiese, K. (1948). Fish in the air. Viking.Yashima, T. (1958). Umbrella. Viking.Yashima, T. (1967). Seashore story. Viking.Yolen, J., & Young, E. (1967). The emperor and the

kite. World.Zemach, H., & Zemach, M. (1969). The judge: An

untrue tale. Farrar.

APPENDIX B: BEHAVIORAL DEFINITIONSFROM DAVIS (1984)

Dependent: seeking or relying on others for help, pro-tection, or reassurance; maintaining close proxim-ity to others.

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Independent: self-initiated and self-contained behav-ior, autonomous functioning, resistance to exter-nally imposed constraints.

Cooperative: working together or in a joint effort to-ward a common goal, complementary division oflabor in a given activity.

Competitive: striving against another in an activity orgame for a particular goal, position, reward; desireto be first, best, winner.

Directive: guiding, leading, impelling others towardan action or goal; controlling behaviors of others.

Submissive: yielding to the direction of others; defer-ence to wishes of others.

Persistent: maintenance of goal-directed activity de-spite obstacles, setbacks, or adverse conditions.

Explorative: seeking knowledge or information thr-ough careful examination or investigation; inquis-itive and curious.

Creative: producing novel idea or product; unique so-lution to a problem; engaging in fantasy or imagi-native play.

Imitative: duplicating, mimicking, or modeling behav-ior (activity or verbalization) of others.

Nurturant: giving physical or emotional aid, support,or comfort to another; demostrating affection orcompassion for another.

Aggressive: physically or emotionally hurting some-one; verbal aggression; destroying property.

Emotional: affective display of feelings; manifestationof pleasure, fear, anger, sorrow, and so on via laugh-ing, cowering, crying, frowning, violent outbursts,and so on.

Active: gross motor (large muscle) physical activity,work, and play.

Passively active: fine motor (small muscle) activity;alert, attentive, activity but with minimal or nophysical movements (e.g., reading, talking, think-ing, etc.).

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