Here's an article by the Australian ABC screeching that last year's top 100-purchased children's books have a strong male bias.

Book week: Analysis of bestsellers suggests kids' bookshelves are on a lean

What do you see when you really look at the books on your kids' bookshelf?

We read Nielsen BookScan's 100 top-selling kids' picture books of last year, keeping track of gender: who spoke, who was the lead character, what type of character were they?

The results suggest — at least when it comes to the books that are being bought in large numbers — this crucial cultural starting point for many kids is still male-dominated.

Read the article here.

The article bemoans the following points:

• Males outnumbered females

• No lead character more likely than a female lead

• More than twice as many books written by men

• Five times as many books with all male characters

• No gendered characters more likely than all female characters

• The bad guys are just that: guys

• Mums nearly twice as likely as dads to appear on their own

• Females make up half the animal kingdom, but not in picture books

• Newer books not necessarily more balanced

I found the article interesting, not so much for the points in the above list, but for the moral outrage it tries to (ahem) engender .

A large part of me was thinking waah, waah, waah - talk about fake news. Anyone want to argue that women can't be successful children's writers, muggles?

Here's the point.



This article is based on the top-selling books. You can't argue with retail. If this is what people bought, this is what they wanted. And here's the kicker - if you have to generalise, girls read books and boys don't. I see this made real in the classroom every week day.

Sure, there will be many reasons people can argue about the gender bias in children's books ("oh, the publishers and store buyers are male-dominated, waah") - but my only point here is that if this is what people buy, this is what it is. Don't make it about gender discrimination. If gender was an issue in children's books, every top seller would by The Pony Club and Madeline.

Interestingly in the 2016 Australian census, more than 80% of single-parent families were led by the mother... 80% compared to 20% ... now, carry the one, move the decimal point, squint a bit ... the reality is that FOUR times as many single-parent families in Australia are led by single-mothers, and the article is complaining about mums being represented nearly twice as likely to be single than dads.

PSD-Kiwi wrote: ↑Wed Aug 22, 2018 5:40 pm I am ashamed to be a part of the human-race...what the fuck is going on in this day and age!

Too many people think that freedom of speech means everyone must listen to what they have to say, and the Internet makes that easy for them. Those most vocal people are being fed bullshit (Marxism is Good!) at universities, by academics who should be publicly flogged, regularly, until they apologise for being miserable excuses for human beings, and start working for a living rather than being professional rabble raisers. I, for one ... sorry, what? ... rambling? ... oh.

PSD-Kiwi wrote: ↑Wed Aug 22, 2018 5:40 pm I am ashamed to be a part of the human-race...what the fuck is going on in this day and age!

In my day to day life i see no sign if this nonsense.

Fucking gender-equality..what it actually means is change the bias to the other side

Men must be slaves and every minority must be in power...fuck that

Extremo fascism, what happened to the idea of democracy?

The feminist movement returns! Bigly Big

Wow, a negative rating by the biggest bogan fool in Cambodia who's never lived there.

How shall I ever recover from that setback?

Go tar some roads.

people who hand out neg karma for no good reason will have this feature removed