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Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Presence of Female Characters and
Gender Stereotyping in Award-Winning Picture Books Between the 1930s and
the 1960s

Article  in  Sex Roles · November 2003

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Sex Roles, Vol. 49, Nos. 9/10, November 2003 (°

C 2003)

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Presence

of Female Characters and Gender Stereotyping
in Award-Winning Picture Books Between
the 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 of
gender 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 article
we consider whether this steady change can be projected back into the decades before the
1960s, 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 and
1960s were less gender stereotyped than the characters of the 1930s and 1950s. We interpret
these findings in terms of the greater level of conflict over gender roles that existed in the
1940s and 1960s, as well as the relatively greater status enjoyed by American women in those
decades.

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

It has been just over three decades since
Weitzman, Eifler, Hokada, and Ross (1972) produced
their classic study on gender role socialization in chil-
dren’s books. Weitzman et al.’s primary focus was on
winners and runners-up of the Caldecott Medal (the
most prestigious award for children’s picture books),
especially those selected during the 5 years from 1967
to 1971. Their major finding was that American pic-
ture books for preschoolers depicted male and female
characters in stereotyped ways and that they hardly
showed female characters at all. Weitzman et al. sug-
gested that both the stereotyping of all characters and
the relative invisibility of female characters taught
young readers an important lesson about the relative
1 Department
of Sociology, Rhode Island College, Providence,
Rhode Island.
2 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of
Sociology, Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island 02908;
e-mail: rclark@ric.edu.
worth of boys and girls in American society: that “boys
are more highly valued than girls” (p. 1125).
Weitzman et al. sparked a series of follow-up
studies of feminist research into the gender con-
tent and effects of children’s books. By 2003, no
fewer 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 these
studies have had some effect on the kinds of books
that have been chosen to be award winners (see

439 0360-0025/03/1100-0439/0 °
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440
Clark, Kulkin, & Clancy, 1999). Clark, Lennon, and
Morris (1993) reported that Caldecott winners and
runners-up between 1987 and 1991 made female char-
acters more visible and less stereotyped than was
the 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 1987–1991
group 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 study
has been to examine this possibility by looking again
at 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 of
expectations. 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 the
percentage of Caldecotts without female characters
had decreased from 33% in the late 1960s to 25% in
the late 1980s to 15% in the late 1990s. Moreover,
using standards that we will describe in our method
section below, they found that whereas female and
male 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 to
be portrayed in reverse stereotypical fashion by the
late 1990s. For example, Clark et al. (2003) found that
late-1960s female characters were much more likely
to be depicted as nurturant than were their male coun-
terparts, whereas male characters were slightly more
likely than female characters to be depicted as nurtu-
rant in the late 1990s.
In addition to the empirical evidence from which
one might have extrapolated a straight-line trend be-
tween the late 1960s and the late 1990s back to the
3 Because the Caldecott was first awarded in 1938, we were unable
to investigate winners from 1937 to 1941 and so chose the winners
from the period 1938 to 1942 instead.
Clark, Guilmain, Saucier, and Tavarez
past, there are some interpretations of that trend that
also accord with such an extrapolation. One such in-
terpretation, based upon the reasoning of Weitzman
et 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 value
placed 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 fashion
in the last century, then, to justify a belief that the
depiction of gender in children’s picture books will
also have been subject to a more-or-less monotonic
progression.
Almost as soon as we had laid out this expec-
tation, however, we found ourselves drawn more and
more to the adverb “more-or-less” and less and less to
the 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 periods
of racial conflict (notably during the 1950s and early
1960s), Black characters virtually disappeared from
children’s books. Could conflict over gender roles
have had similar effects on the appearance of female
characters in children’s books? Could conflict over
gender roles and the relative value placed on men and
women in society (clearly distinguishable concepts)
affect different aspects of the portrayal of gender in
children’s picture books? Could it be, for instance,
that conflict in society over gender roles decreases
the visibility of female characters, whereas increases
in the relative value of women decrease the amount of
gender stereotyping? And has there been enough lo-
cal variation in prevailing gender norms and conflicts
by decade in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s to have
generated significant variation from the onward and
upward trend toward the depiction of gender equality
in children’s books of the final three decades of the
century? We thought, perhaps, that the answer to all
of these questions might be affirmative.
In particular, we wondered whether, because the
Great Depression is associated with a degradation in
women’s relative status in the public sphere,4 late-
1930s Caldecotts might have tended to depict men
and women in traditional roles. We also speculated
4 Rowbotham (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’s
employment.
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Gender Stereotyping in Award-Winning Picture Books
about the possibility that, because the Depression ac-
tually diminished conflict over women’s roles, it may
have led to relatively high levels of female-character
visibility. 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 conflict
over women’s roles, especially during the late 1940s,
may have led to relatively few female characters in the
books. Because the 1950s were a time when traditional
gender roles prevailed in the larger society, and when
there was relatively little conflict over gender roles,
we hypothesized that Caldecotts may again have de-
picted men and women in conventional stereotyped
ways 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 with
earlier decades, as well as fewer female characters.
Consequently, we approached our data with two
competing hypotheses, one of which we dub the
“monotonic change” (or MC) hypothesis and the
other which we call the “local variation” (LV) hy-
pothesis. The MC hypothesis holds that books in later
decades will generally have more female characters
and less gender stereotyping of their characters than
book in earlier decades. The LV hypothesis holds that
books from the late 1930s and the late 1950s will have
more female characters but more gender stereotyping
than books from the late 1940s and the late 1960s.
METHOD
For the current project, we closely examined the
20 Caldecott winners and runners-up from 1938 to
1942, the 28 from 1947 to 1951, the 18 from 1957 to
1961, and the 18 from 1967 to 1971. (See Appendix
A for the books analyzed.) We reexamined the latter
group, the 18 from 1967 to 1971, even though it had
previously been studied by Weitzman et al. (1972) and
Clark et al. (1993), to make sure that the same readers
(the four coauthors) applied the same standards to the
books of all four time periods.
One reason for focusing on Caldecott winners is
the unusual influence these books have had on tastes
for children’s literature. The Caldecott is not only
the most prestigious award for preschool literature,
but it also guarantees its winners phenomenal sales
(Clark, 1992). The Caldecott Medal is awarded annu-
441
ally by the Caldecott Committee of the Association
for Library Services to Children (ALSC), a division
of the American Library Association. The 15 mem-
bers of this Committee each year must be members of
the ALSC, and all will have distinguished themselves
within this Association for their skills at evaluating
children’s books (e.g., Fader, 1999). It is therefore
possible that members of the Caldecott committee
are more responsive to social change than are other
arbiters of popular books for children, such as the
publishers of Golden Books.
Here we briefly outline how we measured both
the visibility of female characters and the degree of
gender stereotyping in the books we have examined.
Following Weitzman et al. (1972) and Clark et al.
(1993), we measured visibility of female characters
in terms of four indicators: the percentage of books in
each period that have no female characters, the per-
centage with a central female character, the percent-
age of human single-gender illustrations that depict
girls or women, and the percentage of single-sex ani-
mal illustrations that depict females.
Weitzman et al. (1972) failed to specify how they
measured the degree of gender-stereotyping in the
Caldecotts they studied. As Clark et al. (1993) did
before, we relied on Davis’ refined set of variables
for dealing with 15 kinds of gender-related behavior
(Davis, 1994; see the Appendix B for variable def-
initions). Given these variable traits, we posit that
mainstream 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 central
character, the most important character of the same
sex, and the two most important characters of the
other sex, where supporting characters were deemed
sufficiently visible for analysis. In many books, we ex-
amined fewer than four characters (sometimes as few
as 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’s
They 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 that
a character possessed a trait, we accorded this trait to
the character. If three or four failed to see a trait,
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442 Clark, Guilmain, Saucier, and Tavarez

Table I. Visibility of Female Characters in Caldecott Winners and before the 1960s. It provided much more support for
Runners-Up the local variation (LV) hypothesis. Our results follow,
1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s decade by decade.
Total number 20 28 18 18
of books
Percent without 0% 22% 11% 33% The 1930s
female charactersa
Percent with 45% 14% 39% 17%
As shown in Table I, female characters of the
central female
charactersb late 1930s were more visible than those in any other
Human single-gender illustrations decade. All of the 1930s books included a female char-
Total number 335 508 163 196 acter, and 45% included a central female character.
Percent with 24% 16% 40% 10% Girls or women were shown in 24% of human single-
female charactersc
gender illustrations, and female animals were shown
Nonhuman single-sex illustrations
Total number 190 130 101 119 in 19% of the animal single-sex illustrations.
Percent femaled 19% 20% 10% 1% Weitzman et al. (1972) and Clark et al. (1993,
a Differences between 1930s and 1940s books, significant at .03
2003) have traced a pattern in which the presence
level; between 1930s and 1960s books, at .01 level; between 1940s of female characters is associated with low gender-
and 1950s books, at .11 level. No other differences statistically stereotyping in Caldecotts between the 1960s and the
significant. 1990s. But despite the high visibility of female char-
b Differences between 1930s and 1940s books, significant at .02 level;
acters in 1930s Caldecotts, we found (see Table II)
between 1930 and 1960s books, at .06 level, between 1940s and
1950s books, at .06 level; between 1950s and 1960s books, at .14
that there is a good deal of gender stereotyping in
level. No other differences close to being significant. them. Female characters were more dependent, sub-
c All differences significant at .05 level. missive, imitative, nurturant, emotional, and passively
d Differences between 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s books, significant at
active than male characters. Male characters, on the
.05 level. Differences between 1930s and 1940s books, not statis- other hand, were more independent, competitive, di-
tically significant.
rective, persistent, explorative, aggressive, and active
than female characters. Male and female characters
we decided that the trait did not exist in the charac- evinced roughly the same levels of creativity and co-
ter. If there was a tie (with two of us seeing the trait operativeness. Of the 15 traits we examined, 13 were
and two not seeing it), we assigned a missing value more likely to be found in characters of the stereo-
to the character for that trait, and the character was typically appropriate gender in the 1930s, and 2 were
deleted in analysis of that trait. Overall, the four of us about equally likely to be found in male and female
examined 133 characters and obtained an overall in- characters, which makes the 1930s the decade in which
tercoder or interrater reliability of 88%; agreements we found the greatest amount of gender stereotyping
varied between 80% (for emotionality) and 99% (for in Caldecott winners and runners-up. Although the
activeness). stereotyping is consistent with our MC hypothesis, the
We determined the statistical significance of per- degree of visibility of female characters is not.
centage differences by calculating chi-square statis- As might be expected during the tumultuous
tics. In the case of all four visibility indicators (e.g., per- 1930s, there was a considerable amount of reach-
centage of books with female characters), we looked ing back to traditional American and Western sto-
at six differences: between the 1930s and the 1940s, ries and myths in the list of 1930s Caldecotts. Every
1950s and 1960s, first; between the 1940s, 1950s, and year brought its very large (by more recent picture
1960s, next; and between the 1950s and 1960s, last. book standards) volumes, with traditional themes:
Summaries of these analyses are presented in notes Fish and Lawson’s Four and Twenty Blackbirds (Fish
at the bottom of Table I. In the case of all 15 behav- & Lawson, 1937), Fish and Lathrop’s Animals of
ioral traits, we examined differences between the per- the Bible: A Picture Book (Fish & Lathrop, 1937),
centage of male and female characters who possessed Gag’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Gag, 1938),
each trait (e.g., dependence) for each decade. Daugherty’s Andy and the Lion (Daugherty, 1938),
the D’Aulaires’ Abraham Lincoln (D’Aulaires &
RESULTS D’Aulaires, 1939), Lawson’s They Were Strong and
Good (Lawson, 1940), and the Petershams’ The
Our analysis showed almost no support for the American ABC (Petersham & Petersham, 1941). The
monotonic change (MC) hypothesis in the decades characters in these books were likely to be gender
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Gender Stereotyping in Award-Winning Picture Books 443

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 Female
Traits characters characters characters characters characters characters characters characters
Dependent 24 62 S∗ 26 54 S 11 50 S 37 29 R
Independent 90 70 S 93 90 T 100 80 S 88 83 T
Cooperative 81 85 T 83 69 R 87 92 T 79 100 S
Competitive 36 27 S 30 30 T 42 8S 18 17 T
Directive 48 27 S 36 44 R 46 27 S 59 57 T
Submissive 25 50 S 15 0R 8 27 S 0 0T
Persistent 90 50 S∗ 78 85 R 85 67 S 73 60 S
Explorative 85 46 S∗ 83 43 S∗ 36 50 R 66 33 S
Creative 58 57 T 52 33 S 64 36 S 40 80 R
Imitative 8 15 S 18 8R 0 0T 0 0T
Nurturant 43 75 S 44 75 S 33 73 S∗ 56 71 S
Aggressive 35 23 S 17 21 T 13 0S 27 14 S
Emotional 63 92 S 54 67 S 60 57 T 79 50 R
Active 100 92 S 100 85 S 100 100 T 100 100 T
Passively 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 in
the stereotypical direction; R indicates that the difference is in the reverse stereotypical direction; T indicates that there’s essentially
no difference (less than a 5% difference) between males and females (i.e., that there is a tie).

stereotyped. Lawson’s family history, They Were
Strong and Good, for instance, features three extraor-
dinarily active men and three extraordinarily passive
women. (One of these women is so nearly invisible
that we couldn’t code her in our analysis of gender
stereotyping. There just wasn’t enough information
about 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” rule
among the late-1930s Caldecotts. Modern classics,
which “happened” to focus on female characters, such
as McCluskey’s Make Way for Ducklings (McCluskey,
1941) and Bemelman’s Madeline (Bemelman, 1939),
were honored, and they introduced independent and
nonsubmissive female characters. Similarly, interest
is 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 My
Mother’s House; Clark & Herrera, 1941) and Chinese
(Handforth’s, Mei Li; Handforth, 1938). Some of
these books, such as Mei Li, featured surprisingly ac-
tive female characters. On the whole, though, late-
1930s Caldecotts featured a good deal of gender
stereotyping.
The 1940s
As Table I indicates, we found that female char-
acters in Caldecotts of the late 1940s were more visible
than they were in the late-1960s Caldecotts, but less
visible than they were in either the late 1930s or the
late 1950s. Fully 22% of 1940s books had no female
characters, 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 were
of females.
If the visibility of female characters were indi-
rectly associated with gender stereotyping, as it is for
the Caldecotts from late 1960s to the late 1990s, one
would expect considerable gender stereotyping in the
late 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 those
of any other decade we examined. For, although fe-
male characters in these books remained (as they were
in the 1930s) substantially more dependent, less ex-
plorative, more nurturant, and more emotional than
male characters, they were just as independent, com-
petitive, and aggressive as male characters, and less
cooperative, 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 during
World War II?
Probably not. But we probably are seeing signs
of ambivalence on the part of authors, publishers, and
award-givers, about gender roles. One does, of course,
find some very traditional, martial male characters
in Malcolmson and Burton’s Song of Robin Hood
(Malcolmson & Burton, 1947) and Holbrook and
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444
Ward’s America’s Ethan Allen (Holbrook & Ward,
1949). But there is a notable turning away from adult
human society and its troubles in these books. Read-
ers were exposed to the zany, masculine world of
Dr Seuss in McElligot’s Pool, If I Ran the Zoo, and
Bartholomew and the Oobleck (Seuss, 1947, 1949,
1950). Mainly, however, children got books about
nature, animals, and children: 20 of the 27 award-
winning books focused on either nature, animals, or
children. Not infrequently the books were simultane-
ously about nature, animals, and children, as they are
in McCluskey’s Blueberries for Sal (McCluskey, 1948)
and Davis and Woodward’s The Wild Birthday Cake
(Davis & Woodward, 1949). And children and animals
are relatively easily forgiven minor transgressions of
gender boundaries. Thus, Sal, out picking blueberries
with Mom, can be explorative and persistent, and she
does not need to be at all nurturant, and Johnny (in
The Wild Birthday Cake) can develop a cooperative
relationship 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 finds
a working and assertive adult female, as one does in
Brown’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-1940s
Caldecotts do provide support for the LV hypothesis,
we found little evidence that they might have reflected
an egalitarian Zeitgeist borne of war. On the contrary,
it seems more likely that these books reflected some
combination of a confusion about gender norms, an
exhaustion with wartime preoccupations of all sorts,
and perhaps a fear of being labeled too liberal or even
“communist.” (Joseph McCarthy was elected to the
Senate 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 look
unappealing.
The 1950s
We found that female characters were less visi-
ble in the Caldecotts of the late 1950s than they were
in the 1930s, but that they were more visible in the
1950s than they were in Caldecotts of the 1940s or
the 1960s. Only 11% of the 1950s books had no fe-
male character and fully 39% had a central female
Clark, Guilmain, Saucier, and Tavarez
character. Forty percent of the human single-gender
illustrations in the late-1950s Caldecotts were of girls
or women. The only indicator on which we found rela-
tively low female-character visibility among the 1950s
Caldecotts was for animal single-sex illustrations: only
10% of these were of females.
Female visibility in 1950s Caldecotts was second
only to its counterpart in 1930s Caldecotts, and the
amount of gender-stereotyping was also second only
to 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 to
be explorative than their male counterparts. Typical
of the 1950s books are two in the series about Anatole
the mouse, Anatole and Anatole and the Cat, by Titus
and Galdone (1956, 1957). In these books, the en-
terprising and creative Anatole makes his fortune in
France’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 we
found in late-1950s books is very consistent with a
view that these books reflected the “separate spheres”
ethos of the decade.
The 1960s
The results of our examination of the 1960s
Caldecotts are consistent with those of Weitzman
et 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 books
had no female characters, and only 17% had a central
female character. Moreover, only 10% of all single-
gender human illustrations in these books were, by
our count, of girls or women, and only a miniscule
0.8% of single-sex animal illustrations were of fe-
males. On all visibility dimensions, then, late-1960s
Caldecotts were outstanding for their capacity to keep
female characters invisible.
On the other hand, though, we did not find as
much gender stereotyping in the 1960s Caldecotts as
Weitzman et al. apparently did. In fact, we found these
books 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 aggressive
than their male counterparts, as one would expect by
stereotype, but they were also less dependent, more
creative, and less emotional. On 7 of the 15 dimen-
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Gender Stereotyping in Award-Winning Picture Books
sions (e.g., independence), male and female charac-
ters had the focal trait in approximately equal mea-
sure. Preston and Parker’s eponymous characters in
Pop 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 the
1960s does not seem to be as clearly a reflection of
authors’ 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 one
might have expected from a decade of liberationist
social movements; however, they do not focus on the
women’s movement directly. Retellings of folktales
from “other” societies abound and constitute the basis
for Yashimo’s Seashore Story (Japan; Yashimo, 1967),
Dayrell and Lent’s Why the Sun and the Moon Live in
the Sky (Africa; Dayrell & Lent, 1968), Ransome and
Shulevitz’s The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship
(Russia; Ransome & Shulevitz, 1968), Sleator and
Lent’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 the
Kite (China; Yolen & Young, 1967). We also found
among honored books Keats’ Goggles! (Keats, 1969),
the story of two African American boys pursued by
an urban gang. None of these books, except for The
Emperor and the Kite, has a central female charac-
ter, but none is reminiscent of the nature books of
the late 1940s for their avoidance of adult human
society either. Some of the absence of female char-
acters, however, seems to reflect the Caldecott com-
mittee’s interest in male-centered animal stories, as
in Lionni’s Frederick (about a mouse; Lionni, 1967),
Lionni’s Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse (about a
mouse; Lionni, 1969), Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic
Pebble (about a donkey; Steig, 1969), and Lobel’s Frog
and Toad were Friends (about a frog and a toad; Lobel,
1970), many of which are Aesop-like fables designed
to 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 competing
expectations. 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 has
become less apparent in such books since the 1960s,
we thought it possible that we would find greater
445
invisibility of female characters and more gender-
stereotyping farther back in time. We called this our
monotonic change (MC) hypothesis. On the other
hand, we thought it possible that the depiction of
gender 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 the
MC hypothesis.
The MC hypothesis was undermined, in part, by
the complete absence of a negative correlation be-
tween the presence of female characters and gen-
der stereotyping between the late 1930s and the late
1960s. Unlike what seems to occur (see, for instance,
Clark et al., 1993, 2003) in award-winners between
the late 1960s and the late 1990s, when the presence
of female characters and gender stereotyping were
negatively correlated, we found that they were posi-
tively correlated between the late 1930s and the late
1960s. In the 1930s and 1950s, when female characters
were present in relatively great numbers in Calde-
cott winners and runners-up, gender stereotyping was
most prevalent. In the 1940s and 1960s, when female
characters were present in relatively small numbers,
gender stereotyping, at least as we measured it, was
least obvious. The considerable presence of female
characters in 1930s and 1950s Caldecotts may have
had slightly different origins in the two decades. The
presence of female characters in the books of the
1930s results, in part, from the fact that the Calde-
cott committee honored much longer books then than
it has in later decades. Longer books, particularly
those with multiple stories (such as books of Bible
stories), are simply more likely to include female
characters, even central female characters, some-
where. The presence of female characters in 1950s
books, on the other hand, seems to reflect at least
a 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 Fly
High, Fly Low (Freeman, 1957), LaBastida and
Ets’ 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, the
authors of 1930s and 1950s award winners seem to
have had no problem writing about female characters.
The MC hypothesis was also challenged by the
nonlinear pattern in gender stereotyping that oc-
curred by decade between the late 1930s and the late
1960s. The most “deviant” decade is the 1940s, when
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446
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 on
6 traits, and similar behavior on 3 traits. We thought it
possible, as expressed in our LV hypothesis, that the
late-1940s Caldecotts might evince less stereotyping
than those of the late 1930s and the late 1950s, but our
reasoning behind this expectation was not borne out.
Much of the nonstereotyped behavior in these books
came from children, such as Sal in Blueberries for Sal
and Johnny in The Wild Birthday Cake, who were
put into settings where minor transgressions of gen-
der boundaries are easily tolerated. We were so struck
by the socially-acceptable transgressions of these chil-
dren, in fact, that we encourage future researchers to
do what we failed to do: analyze the differences in the
ways adults and children are stereotyped by gender
in children’s books more generally. In fact, though,
there seems to be a turning away from the concerns
of adult society in the books selected by the Caldecott
committee of the late 1940s, which led us to wonder
whether 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 and
runners-up from the late 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s
provided support for the view that the gender rela-
tions depicted in award-winning picture books are
more likely to reflect local, temporal variations in gen-
der norms than to express a long-term trend toward
increasing the increasing visibility of female charac-
ters and decreasing gender stereotyping. One implica-
tion of our findings is that gender stereotyping and the
presence of female characters in award-winning pic-
ture books for children may reflect different aspects of
gender relations in society: that they may not both, as
Weitzman et al.’s classic study (Weitzman et al., 1972)
suggested, be functions of the relative status of men
and women, and of boys and girls, in society. Gen-
der stereotyping may well reflect the relative status of
women between the late 1930s and the late 1960s. The
steady decrease in the amount of gender stereotyping
found in Caldecott winners and runners-up since the
1960s may, then, reflect increases in women’s status
during the period. The visibility (or invisibility) of fe-
male characters, on the other hand, may well reflect
the degree of conflict over women’s roles in society in
the decades we examined. Consequently, we specu-
late that the increasing visibility of female characters
in books since the 1960s may reflect decreases in the
degree of conflict over such roles since then.
Clark, Guilmain, Saucier, and Tavarez
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 the
consciousness of the award committee, about the im-
portance of gender-egalitarian displays in children’s
media. Antifeminist backlash in other media (see,
for instance, hooks, 1997, on film) suggests that such
a trend is reversible. Our data from the first four
decades of Caldecott awards suggest that, under the
wrong circumstances, the current 30-year trend to-
ward less stereotyped displays and more visibility of
female characters in children’s award-winning picture
books 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. Scribner
Brown, M. (1950). Dick Whittington and his cat.
Scribner.
Brown, M. (1947). Stone soup. Scribner
Brown, 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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Gender Stereotyping in Award-Winning Picture Books
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.
Coward
Gag, 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.
447
Petersham, M., & Petersham, M. (1941). An American
ABC. 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 DEFINITIONS
FROM DAVIS (1984)
Dependent: seeking or relying on others for help, pro-
tection, or reassurance; maintaining close proxim-
ity to others.
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448
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 of
labor in a given activity.
Competitive: striving against another in an activity or
game for a particular goal, position, reward; desire
to be first, best, winner.
Directive: guiding, leading, impelling others toward
an 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 or
compassion for another.
Aggressive: physically or emotionally hurting some-
one; verbal aggression; destroying property.
Emotional: affective display of feelings; manifestation
of 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 no
physical movements (e.g., reading, talking, think-
ing, etc.).
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