Interesting study shows that stories written by children are more likely to have male characters. Interesting implications. The study suggests that children inherently have a positive image of males.

coffeeinvenice · 2021-08-17T13:25:23+00:00

From the study:

They found that both boys and girls tend to write mostly about male characters, but there were some differences. Young boys featured males in their stories approximately 75% of the time and kept close to that average as they aged. Young girls did the same approximately 70% of the time, but things changed as they grew older—female characters began appearing more often. By the time they reached age 13, the percentage of male to female characters had dropped to 50%.

Perhaps children have an inherently positive image of male characters, and if this declines with age in females, it is the result of cultural conditioning?

The research study also found that "in books written by adults for children from 1813 to the present, found that 38% of the characters in them were female.

Some interesting implications:

I would argue that 38% is still a pretty high percentage, and could easily be higher or lower, depending on the country/language the books were written in. This study only looked at books published in Britain.
Is there any link between the predominance of male characters written by children and the predominance of male characters in published children's storybooks? Intuition suggests there is, but how do you prove a link?
If the percentage of male characters in children's storybooks is higher than the percentage of female characters, is this because there is a gender bias in children's story publishing, or is it because children prefer stories with male characters, and/or storybooks with male characters are more likely to be popular and financially successful?

iainmf · 2021-08-18T01:23:48+00:00

Villains are more likely to be male, even if your protagonist and companions are female, there still may be more male characters.

aerial_coitus · 2021-08-17T16:30:34+00:00

children inherently have a positive image of males

LOL……. not for long, don’t let the feminists and mass media see this, they will find a way to put an end to this real quick

YesAmAThrowaway · 2021-08-17T15:30:04+00:00

This would also speak for the research about gender dysphoria, meaning that gender is not simply what your bits down there are but rather something ingrained into your mind, and if your bits and the mind don't match, you're not gonna feel all too fine about it.

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