Feminist Perspectives on Gender Representation in Children’s Books

Abstract

Gender representation in children’s books is a primary vehicle for shaping early perceptions of social roles and identities. While existing studies often employ linguistic discourse analysis, this research offers a unique scholarly contribution by synthesizing a feminist philosophical framework with a mixed-methods design. By analyzing the ten most-read non-fable children’s books from the Buku Digital Kemdikbud ‘Ministry of Education and Culture Republic of Indonesia Digital Book’ portal, this study identifies both narrative patterns and visual frequencies. The results show that there are traditional gender narrative patterns that associate women with domestic work and men with work outside the home. However, gender narrative efforts that promote gender equality are also seen in 3 of the 10 children’s books. In addition, the accumulation of character illustrations in the 10 children’s books is dominated by male characters with a percentage of 52%, while the percentage of female character illustrations occurrence is 48%. These findings provide a critical evidence base for children’s book writers and illustrators to move beyond traditional stereotypes and support the development of inclusive identities and gender equality values from an early age.