'We have to do our part': Calgary businesses reduce water usage amid restrictions
Following a major water main break and calls from the city to reduce water consumption, some Calgary businesses are making extra efforts to conserve.
Parents who want to challenge gender stereotypes with their children may want to pay close attention to the type of storybooks they read to their kids, according to new research.
A new study examining gender stereotypes and associations, published Thursday in the journal Psychological Science, suggests that children’s storybooks contain many words that adults consider to be gendered, which may help to shape a child’s understanding of gender stereotypes.
“We found that many popular children’s books often read to young children, like Curious George and Amelia Bedelia, contain rich information about gender that is presented in subtle ways,” Molly Lewis, a researcher with the department of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and lead author of the study, said in a press release.
“In some cases, the stereotypes in these books were stronger than in books targeted at adults.”
Lewis and her team compiled a collection of 247 books commonly read to under the age of five, and asked adults to rate how strongly the words in these texts were associated with masculinity and femininity on a 5-point scale. An overall gender bias score was then calculated for each book.
Books with the highest feminine-bias scores included “Chrysanthemum,” “Brave Irene,” and “Amelia Bedelia,” according to the study.
Books with the highest masculine-bias scores included “Curious George,” “Dear Zoo,” and “Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site.”
“The Polar Express,” “In the Night Kitchen,” and “Hippos Go Berserk,” on the other hand, were rated as neutral, according to the study.
Overall, the study found more female biases in the collection of novels than male.
Researchers also used “word embeddings,” a machine learning method, to measure words’ gender associations by identifying patterns in gender-related “word neighbours” – words that typically appear together across large bodies of text, such as “merry” and “Christmas” in American English.
The analysis showed that children’s books vary widely in the number of gender associations they contain, from strongly male to strongly female.
“We found that books that we estimated to be gender-biased based on adult judgments also tended to be biased when we used this automated method,” Lewis said.
“This is important because it suggests that some of the gender associations that emerge in adulthood begin to appear in the statistics of children’s texts and could potentially be learnable from exposure to children’s books,” she added.
Machine learning also revealed statistical patterns of words in the books that reflected common gender stereotypes, as determined by the researchers, such as boys are better at math than girls, or that girls are better at reading.
“Another unexpected result was that children tended to be exposed to books that conveyed gender stereotypes about their own gender—girls tended to be read books about girl characters; boys tended to be read books about boy characters,” Lewis said.
“These findings are important because they suggest that books may be inadvertently teaching young children about gender stereotypes.”
This, researchers say, raises the question of how children learn stereotypes about other genders when they more commonly read books with stereotypes of their own gender.
Lewis adds that an encouraging finding is that not all storybooks contain gender stereotypes, and some more recently published books feature gender information that contradicts stereotypes.
“One implication of this finding is that parents may be able to influence children’s development of beliefs about gender through their choice of books,” she said.
This isn’t the first study to look at gender stereotypes and gender representation in literature.
A recent analysis of thousands of children's books published in the last 60 years suggested that male protagonists remain overrepresented, despite a higher portion of books now featuring female leads.
The analysis, published earlier this month, found that since 1960 the proportion of female central characters has increased, and continues to increase. However, the authors report that books published since 2000 still feature a "disproportionate number" of male protagonists.
- With files from CTVNews.ca’s Brooklyn Neustaeter
Following a major water main break and calls from the city to reduce water consumption, some Calgary businesses are making extra efforts to conserve.
Israel on Saturday rescued four hostages who were kidnapped in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, the largest such recovery operation since the war began. At least 94 Palestinians including children were killed as heavy fighting continued around the sites in central Gaza, the Health Ministry said.
A 49-year-old woman was seriously injured Friday morning when a boat she was riding in collided with a boat being driven by Ontario Provincial Police in Sudbury.
Decorated figure skater Tessa Virtue and Toronto Maple Leaf Morgan Rielly have hired a lobbyist as they seek permission to paint the exterior of their Rosedale heritage home, despite objections from city staff.
What if cameras powered by AI were used to monitor a Winnipeg intersection and automatically sent out tickets for infractions? A post on social media alluded to exactly this, and it went viral. However, the post isn't real, but it fooled a lot of people.
A thick and heavy fog has been laying siege to the skies over St. John’s, and drawing a heavy toll from some airplane passengers who’ve seen their travel plans pummelled with no end in sight.
An Ontario man says he’s still considering selling his house, despite this week’s interest rate cut, with his mortgage payments set to leap over $2,000 next month.
Optimism in itself is hardly a cure-all, but numerous studies over the decades have demonstrated a link between a positive outlook and good health outcomes.
Joshua Tarnue’s family is hoping they’ll finally find out the reason why he was murdered in 2023.
Showing off the latest purchase in his Eaton's collection, Corey Quintaine joked he is rebuilding the former flagship store that used to sit at 320 Portage Avenue one Facebook Marketplace purchase at a time.
After learning about food security at school, 11-year-old Violette Ferguson wants fresh eggs and to change the rules around chickens in the city.
An Ontario powerlifter caught a mild cold last year. Six days later, he was fighting for his life in the ICU.
Marking a milestone, Lakeshore resident Olga White celebrated her 107th birthday in style Wednesday.
The municipality of Tantramar, N.B., is holding a sale to get rid of surplus items it acquired after the Town of Sackville amalgamated with smaller communities last year.
For several weeks, a mysterious social media user has apparently been leaving $50 bills hidden across Metro Vancouver.
A statue dedicated to the Royal Regina Rifles Regiment has been officially unveiled in France just ahead of the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
A Cape Breton is this year's recipient of the McEuen Scholarship, which gives him basically a full ride to the medical school at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Mounties in Kelowna nabbed a would-be burglar with an apparent sweet tooth over the weekend.