Gender representation in English and Mandarin children's books recommended by Singapore's National Library Board (NLB)

Books recommended by early reading programmes play a pivotal role in shaping young children’s knowledge of gender identity. The present study examines how females and males are represented in English and Mandarin fiction books from NLB’s recommended reading list for Primary 1 and 2 children. Variabl...

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Main Author: Lee, Gladys Jia Xin
Other Authors: Francis Bond
Format: Final Year Project
Language:English
Published: Nanyang Technological University 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/159974
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1599742023-03-11T20:11:47Z Gender representation in English and Mandarin children's books recommended by Singapore's National Library Board (NLB) Lee, Gladys Jia Xin Francis Bond School of Humanities Geoffrey Benjamin fcbond@ntu.edu.sg Humanities::Linguistics Books recommended by early reading programmes play a pivotal role in shaping young children’s knowledge of gender identity. The present study examines how females and males are represented in English and Mandarin fiction books from NLB’s recommended reading list for Primary 1 and 2 children. Variables such as frequency counts of female and male appearances in both textual and illustrated content, occupational roles, types of names by which the book characters were identified and the order of appearance of gendered characters were examined. The findings reveal a general pattern of female dominance in the English children’s books, and significant male dominance in the Mandarin children’s books. Similarities between the English and Mandarin books include mothers being depicted in domestic settings more frequently than fathers, and some female characters embodying both stereotypical and non-stereotypical qualities; differences include greater female representation in appearances, pronouns, identification by formal names and order of appearance for the English books, but quantitative imbalance biased towards males for the Mandarin books in these aspects and more. The study demonstrates that there needs to be a push for Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE) to implement guidelines that can enable educational authorities (eg. NLB, schools) and parents to select appropriate reading materials for children. Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics and Multilingual Studies 2022-07-07T00:48:19Z 2022-07-07T00:48:19Z 2022 Final Year Project (FYP) Lee, G. J. X. (2022). Gender representation in English and Mandarin children's books recommended by Singapore's National Library Board (NLB). Final Year Project (FYP), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/159974 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/159974 en application/pdf Nanyang Technological University
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Humanities::Linguistics
spellingShingle Humanities::Linguistics
Lee, Gladys Jia Xin
Gender representation in English and Mandarin children's books recommended by Singapore's National Library Board (NLB)
description Books recommended by early reading programmes play a pivotal role in shaping young children’s knowledge of gender identity. The present study examines how females and males are represented in English and Mandarin fiction books from NLB’s recommended reading list for Primary 1 and 2 children. Variables such as frequency counts of female and male appearances in both textual and illustrated content, occupational roles, types of names by which the book characters were identified and the order of appearance of gendered characters were examined. The findings reveal a general pattern of female dominance in the English children’s books, and significant male dominance in the Mandarin children’s books. Similarities between the English and Mandarin books include mothers being depicted in domestic settings more frequently than fathers, and some female characters embodying both stereotypical and non-stereotypical qualities; differences include greater female representation in appearances, pronouns, identification by formal names and order of appearance for the English books, but quantitative imbalance biased towards males for the Mandarin books in these aspects and more. The study demonstrates that there needs to be a push for Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE) to implement guidelines that can enable educational authorities (eg. NLB, schools) and parents to select appropriate reading materials for children.
author2 Francis Bond
author_facet Francis Bond
Lee, Gladys Jia Xin
format Final Year Project
author Lee, Gladys Jia Xin
author_sort Lee, Gladys Jia Xin
title Gender representation in English and Mandarin children's books recommended by Singapore's National Library Board (NLB)
title_short Gender representation in English and Mandarin children's books recommended by Singapore's National Library Board (NLB)
title_full Gender representation in English and Mandarin children's books recommended by Singapore's National Library Board (NLB)
title_fullStr Gender representation in English and Mandarin children's books recommended by Singapore's National Library Board (NLB)
title_full_unstemmed Gender representation in English and Mandarin children's books recommended by Singapore's National Library Board (NLB)
title_sort gender representation in english and mandarin children's books recommended by singapore's national library board (nlb)
publisher Nanyang Technological University
publishDate 2022
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/159974
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