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Updating Richard Scarry
July 5, 2016
It's a funny thing about life; once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.
-Germany Kent, American journalist
-Germany Kent, American journalist
Florida State University recently led "the most comprehensive study of 20th century children's books ever undertaken in the United States." They found a gender bias toward male lead characters, even in books about animals — books like those by Richard Scarry.
"The widespread pattern of underrepresentation of females that we find supports the belief that female characters are less important and interesting than male characters. This may contribute to a sense of unimportance among girls and privilege among boys. The gender inequalities we found may be particularly powerful because they are reinforced by patterns of male-dominated characters in many other aspects of children's media, including cartoons, G-rated films, video games, and even coloring books."
An article "8 changes that were made to a classic Richard Scarry book to keep up with the times. Progress!," illustrates changes that were made to classic Richard Scarry children's books since 1970 to make them more gender appropriate.
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Comments (3)
Displaying All 3 CommentsDr.
Arlington, MA, United States
In 1976, when creating Pound House Children's Center at the Univ. of Michigan, I wanted to order books with 50% female characters. The best I could do was 40%. Same with black and Latinx. While we have a way to go, we can celebrate the huge improvements in the last 40 years!
Pennsylvania, United States
Hopefully children are more influenced by the real human role models in their lives than by the characters in story books. If you don't like the stories----don't read them. As the adult, you are in control.
Spirit Child Yoga and ECE
Aurora, ON, Canada
Interesting that Richard Scarry would amend this, at this time. His books reflected the systemic sexism that was part of the 1970's that feminists were railing against. In the 2000's I took a women's studiies course in which I looked at at this issue. It was an eye-opener for me. I believe that western publishers have long overcome this now. Now, my colleagues in Japan are waking up to this issue and raising awareness about sexism in children's stories there.
And if Richard Scarry and his publishers don't want to redo again five years from now, I hope he is expressing the genders of his characters as more than binary!
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