Reports From the World of Books

Babar, Peter Rabbit, Curious George … conspiracy?

All of these animals, after all, are male and all are protagonists in some of the most popular children’s books of the 20th century.

Charges — and pretty irrefutable evidence — of gender bias in literature have long been a staple of cultural criticism. Now these accusations have been leveled against the children’s book canon. According to a new study published in the April issue of “Gender and Society,” there has been a bias toward male characters — men, boys and, yes, animals — in children’s literature over the last century.

The study’s lead author, Janice McCabe, a professor of sociology at Florida State University, examined nearly 6,000 children’s books published from 1900 to 2000. Of those, 57 percent had a central male character compared with only 31 percent with female protagonists. (Presumably animals of indeterminate gender led the rest.)

As for the animal kingdom, males are central characters in nearly one-fourth (23 percent) of children’s books published each year, while female animal characters figure prominently in only 7.5 percent. Among Caldecott winners, only one winner has a central female animal character. (Mother Duck, in “Make Way for Ducklings,” for those who want to run out and get a copy.)

Over all, at most one-third of children’s books published per year included central female characters that are adult women or female animals. But male animals or male adults appeared in 100 percent.

Books published in the politically sensitive 1990s did move toward parity for human characters, the study notes, but for animals the ratio remained sharply off. The study’s authors assert that the disparity is intentional. Publishers, they say, use “animal characters in an attempt to avoid the problem of gender representation.”

Their conclusion: “Together with research on reader interpretations, our findings regarding imbalanced representations among animal characters suggest that these characters could be particularly powerful, and potentially overlooked, conduits for gendered messages.” Olivia, get on the case.