Cultural Differences in the Construction of Gender: A Thematic Analysis of Gender Representations in American, Spanish, and Czech Children’s Literature

1.1 Cultural Differences in Gender Research

Current research on the representation of gender in children’s literature is largely dependent on the origin of the literature; studies on this topic in American academia have been extensive (Bernstein, 2011; Roberts & Hill, 2003; Taylor, 2003), whereas Spanish literature on this topic has been limited (Valiente, 2002), and Czech literature is almost non-existent (Vesinova-Kalivodova, 1998). American academic research on this topic has identified several consistent markers of traditional gender roles, including female passivity (versus males being portrayed as active), mothers being responsible for domestic labor (men portrayed as working outside the home), women being subservient to or dependent on men, and women as emotional (as opposed to men being rational).

Czech stereotypes of gender are similar to those of the United States, but appear to be more widespread (Crompton & Harris, 1997). As of 2017, the Czech Republic ranked last in the EU Eurobarometer Gender Equality Index, revealing that the majority of Czechs believe ‘the most important role of a woman is to take care of her home and family’ and that ‘women are more likely to make decisions based on their emotions’ (Gender Equality and Gender Pay Gap, 2017). Urban and Urban (2017) in their thematic analysis of children’s films in Central Europe identified the specific representations of adult male figures who, while at home, have all the attributes of small children; wives are taking care of the men as if the female characters are the actual mothers of their husbands (e.g., women characters are cooking for men when they express hunger while the men are playing with the children outside, women are taking care of men’s clothes, health, sleep, etc.).

Spanish gender roles again present similar views of women as subservient to men, but with the additional factor of this inequality being codified by Spanish law (Gutiérrez San Miguel et al., 2014). Restrictions on women’s financial independence, bodily autonomy, property ownership, and legal representation were all explicitly written into the Spanish legal code. While changes to these laws have granted more rights to women (beginning in 1975), Spain’s long history of gender inequality has laid the foundation for gender stereotypes, most notably that women should earn and work less than men.

1.2 Gender in Spanish and Czech Academia

However, it is notable that Spain has made significant progress in gender equality in recent years, and in 2020 ranked 8th in the EU in gender equality (Gender Equality Index Spain, 2020). This change is evident within Spanish academia as well. Specifically, researchers studying children’s picture books published over the last seven years found that the mother figure in Spanish children’s literature has represented recent changes in Spanish society (Valiente, 2002). This suggests that the representation of mothers seems to be shifting and reaching beyond stereotypical gendered parent representations, meaning Spain’s legacy of gendered labor, female unemployment, and wage gaps has shifted in the past decade. One reason for this, in particular in Spanish academia, is the exclusion of children’s literature from the cultural canon. Canonicity brings legitimacy to academic work on literature, meaning ‘there has been remarkably little’ published on the study of children’s literature in Spain (Prieto-Arranz, 2017).

Similar to Spain, limitations to gender research in the Czech Republic can be linked to the relatively recent hesitation of Czech people to validate or identify with feminism (Wolchik, 2022; Svatoňová, 2021). Men and women in the Czech Republic, during the 1990s, regarded feminism as essentially ‘a word for mockery’ (Vesinova-Kalivodova, 366).

In the USA, both gender studies as a whole and the application of gender to the study of children’s literature are well established, but much of the literature from the other two cultures of study primarily covers gender studies alone. In Czech and Spanish academia, gender studies have been limited due to practical and stigmatic issues in getting approval for ‘feminist’-related studies (Valiente, 2002; Vesinova-Kalivodova, 1998). This means that the available research on gender representation has lagged far behind that of the USA. However, research out of the USA finding that traditional gender roles are frequently found in children’s literature (Taylor, 2003) logically extends beyond American literature. While the research on children’s literature in particular has been somewhat limited outside of the USA, other studies of gender representations in different types of literature have reached similar conclusions about the dominance of men and traditional gender roles. A study of textbooks from diverse cultures, for example, found that these books ‘reflect a reality which is more male-oriented, while female representations are lacking in the dominant reality’ (Alam & Badshah, 2022).

1.3 Present Study

Two major gaps appear in research on gender representations in children’s literature. First, no major studies have been conducted on cultural differences in depictions of gender between three different cultures. There have been studies of Spanish children’s books that could be compared to those of the USA (De Sarlo et al., 2022; Prieto-Arranz, 2017). However, no studies seek to do this directly or involve the study of (post-communist) Central European literature.

Second, the change in multi-cultural gender representations over time has yet to be extensively researched. Social and political changes over the past decade (or the last three decades, as the majority of research on this topic started to emerge in the 1990s) undoubtedly play a role in the publishing and popularity of current literature.

The present study seeks to provide insight into these two gaps. By researching Czech, Spanish, and American literature, we will draw conclusions regarding the cultural differences in gender representations through children’s books. The study seeks, therefore, to elucidate differences in the way children are raised to understand gender, and where these representations fall on a spectrum of ultra-traditional gender expectations to ultra-progressive ones. Political changes and the broader acceptance of feminism across the world have led to visible changes in cultural products, but the degree to which these changes have affected children’s educational materials is yet to be fully understood. The research seeks to foster an academic understanding of both cultural differences and how they have changed, specifically in the last decade. The research, therefore, focused on two major questions. First: ‘To what extent do Czech, Spanish, and American children’s literature differ in their representations of gender roles?’ Second: ‘How have these representations changed over the past decade in these three cultures?’

2.1 Sample

The three most popular children’s books were selected from the bestseller lists from each country ranging from 2010 to 2020, i.e., the final sample consisted of 33 American, 33 Spanish, and 33 Czech books (overall n = 99 books). The New York Times Best Seller list (hereafter NYTBSL) tracks the highest-selling children’s books weekly and across the entire USA. An equivalent of this list does not exist in the Czech Republic or Spain, meaning the USA sample was the only one entirely determined by book sales. The Czech books were selected using an online library called Bookport and they were sorted according to the number of times they were read and by the year of publication. For the Spanish sample, the books were selected from different web pages grouped according to the year, as there is no single website with all of the best-selling books from each year. The website used most frequently to construct our sample was Libros más vendidos. Based on the recommendations made by Petrová (2022), only printed books were included in the sample.

In deciding the United States sample, the three books that aligned with our sample requirements and spent the longest on the NYTBSL during that year were selected for data collection. Using this method, some books that spent over a year on the list would have appeared as best sellers the following year but were disqualified from being in the sample for more than one year. For American books, only books listed on the ‘Children’s Picture Books’ section of the NYTBSL were considered, and each book could only appear once in the sample. Books without words, non-fiction books, visual dictionaries, and books that appeared on the bestseller lists but were not published in the chosen years were disqualified. Nearly the same requirements applied to the Czech and Spanish selections; the only additional requirement is that Czech sample books could not be written in Slovak (as these books frequently appeared in Czech book lists).

While all of the books used in the Spanish, American, and Czech samples were intended for children, they varied in their lengths, narrative complexity, and frequency of figures and illustrations. Most of the American books featured illustrations on every page, with text ranging from a few words or sentences to large blocks of texts. Shorter books generally aimed to communicate a simple, general message. Longer books, while still prominently featuring illustrations, aimed to tell a longer narrative or demonstrate more complex themes. The Spanish books, similarly to the American sample, featured illustrations on nearly every page, but varied in length and the amount of text per page, ranging from a few words or sentences to multiple paragraphs. Books in both samples ranged from 10 to 30 pages. The Czech books also featured illustrations, but they had a much larger range in length and narrative complexity. While several books included only a few sentences per page, the majority were up to 70 pages long with entire pages of text, unlike the books used in the Spanish and American samples.

2.2 Analytical Procedure

Inductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was employed to identify themes in the sample. First three authors were familiarized with the American sample, where initial codes were built consensually (Hill, 2012; Hill, Thompson, & Williams, 1997). The second and third author then continued with their respective sample until all ninety-nine books were coded. Following the procedure of Braun and Clarke (2006), the codes were revised (i.e., the codes too specific were joined together and the codes overly general were split). As the last step, codes were sorted into themes, and themes were reviewed by the fourth author, who acted as an auditor (Hill, 2012; Hill et al., 1997). Thematic analysis allowed not only for the determination of which themes and ideas frequently appeared in our sample literature, but also the frequency at which they appeared. The frequency of the themes both between the three cultures and across the years were compared, demonstrating both the cultural differences in the literature, as well as how the representation of gender-based social roles has changed in the last decade.

3.1 Theme One: Traditional Gender Roles

‘Traditional gender roles’ included all instances of a male protagonist, as the present research on children’s literature establishes not only problems with the depiction of women, but also the frequent absence of them (Taylor, 2003). Other instances that were categorized as ‘traditional gender roles’ included gendered sibling roles, traditional division of parental labor and responsibilities, women as caretakers, and traditional ideas of femininity and masculinity. An example of this can be seen in the Czech book Čarodějnice Eulálie, in which the mother character is explicitly shown to be responsible for cooking and cleaning. As explained in the literature review, American, Czech, and Spanish traditional gender roles overlap greatly. However, traditional femininity in the Czech Republic is specifically connected to caring for the home. Therefore, this was coded as ‘women as a caretaker’ and sorted into Theme One. As can be seen in Table 1, all 33 Czech children’s books have instances of traditional gender representation. In American literature, similarly, gender roles are often focused on portraying women as kind, nurturing, and passive. In the book Ladybug Girl Goes to the Beach, for example, the titular character seeks comfort from her mother, rather than her father, portraying both the protagonist as emotional and fearful (unlike her brother), and seeking comfort from her mother (not her father). This aligns with the stereotypical portrayal of women, hence its classification into Theme One. The same can be said of Spanish traditional views of women, where women are portrayed as nurturing, affectionate mother figures. Instances of children seeking comfort from their mothers were therefore coded into Theme One. While both Spanish and American literature falls behind with 25 or more precisely 23 books with this theme. This makes traditional gender roles the most represented theme (82% on average) among the discussed cultures.

The distribution of traditional gender roles was examined throughout the period (2010–2020). Each year contained a sample of three books, so the maximum occurrence of nontraditional gender roles for one year was three and the minimum was zero.

Figure 1 contains the number of books including the traditional gender roles during the examined time period. As can be seen, all of the Czech books represent the male and female characters traditionally, but the overall trend in traditional depiction of gender roles for American and Spanish samples is decreasing.

Figure 1:

The number of books containing theme one (traditional gender roles) through time.

3.2 Theme Two: Non-traditional Gender Roles

‘Non-traditional gender roles’ included any instances described above being challenged or reversed, including the inclusion of a female protagonist, subversion of parental labor division and responsibilities, subversion of gender roles in families, the subversion of typically gendered jobs or activities, and the reversal of expected differences between siblings of a different gender.

For example, in the Czech book Diňáci, the male protagonists are shown drawing and cooking, while the female protagonist enjoys physical education and working out. Because Czech gender roles are focused on a woman’s role in the home, as well as women being more emotional and creative (rather than rational and intellectual), this depiction does not fit with traditional gender perspectives. This was then coded as non-traditional gendered activities. American women, on the other hand, have been traditionally portrayed similarly, so in the book Rosie Revere, Engineer, the female protagonist being an engineer and scientist does not align with the traditional view of women being less rational and intellectual and was therefore coded into Theme Two. Additionally, the presence of a female protagonist was coded as ‘non-traditional’, as in all three cultures, the traditional role of women is to follow and be subservient to men, making an active, rather than passive, young woman in the protagonist role somewhat subversive. Spain’s history of gender inequality, for example, made women reliant on men for most financial and personal decisions. Therefore, a Spanish children’s book featuring a young woman independently making decisions for herself breaks this stereotype and was coded as non-traditional. The number of occurrences of this theme was very similar across all three cultures – American literature ranked first with 21 instances of nontraditional gender roles; Czech books with 20 instances; and Spanish books with 19.

As shown in Figure 2, the first half of the decade fluctuates in representations of non-traditional gender roles, while the second is quite static for all three cultures. In the case of Spanish and American books, we can see some increase, starting from the year 2015. Czech literature, on the other hand, stays constant throughout the whole decade. It can therefore be concluded that there has been a general increase in non-traditional gender narratives of both Spanish and American children’s literature in the past decade.

Figure 2:

The number of books containing the theme two (non-traditional gender roles) through time.

3.3 Theme Three: Diversity and Inclusivity

‘Diversity and inclusivity’ included all direct references to diversity and inclusivity, including, but not limited to, racial representation, the representation of LGBTQ+ characters, gender-neutral characters or diverse groups of main characters, or narratives aiming to expose readers to cultural differences. An example of this coding can be seen in the Spanish book Me llamo Pecas (2018; eng. My name is Pecas). The protagonist’s name is not known, nor is their gender identity. The book reflects on the judgments and limits of a society that defines tastes, needs, and preferences according to gender. Spanish culture has historically enforced strict gender roles, both legally and socially. The inclusion, therefore, of a gender-neutral protagonist represents an intentional diversification of children’s literature. Similarly, in the US, a long history of racial discrimination and violence has resulted in a lack of diversity across American media. Therefore, the inclusion of characters of multiple races and cultural backgrounds shows an effort to diversify and include under-represented groups. This theme was the least represented among all of the cultures (17% on average). Only five Spanish books touched on the topic of diversity and inclusivity, both American and Czech books included the Theme Three six times.

It should also be noted that specific shifts in political and social discourse can be seen in the most popular books of specific years. In American literature, for example, an increased demand for children’s books with black protagonists followed the Black Lives Matter Protests in June 2020. All three books in the 2020 sample, therefore, included a black protagonist or black character in a group of protagonists. This can be seen in Figure 3.

Figure 3:

The number of books containing theme three (diversity and inclusivity) through time.

3.4 Theme Four: Simplistic Moral Lessons

Theme Four focused on simplistic moral lessons, as shorter stories aimed at younger children have less opportunity to subvert traditional gender expectations, and instead focus on delivering a direct, concise moral. While a few general themes like kindness and the importance of family were consistent across all three samples, traditional moral values differ between the examined three cultures. In the US, for example, hard work and the importance of not giving up appeared more than in the Spanish or Czech samples. This is likely due to the emphasis on individualism and personal success in American culture (Fischer, 2008). However, as exhibited by the Czech book Autíčko Karlík (2015; eng. Little Car Carl), the value of helping others can be seen as a reflection of more collectivist cultural values. As shown in Table 1, American (29x) children’s books are filled with traditional elements, while Spanish (18x) and especially Czech literature (11x) falls behind. This is partially because many books used in the Czech sample were significantly longer than those of other cultures. While Czech books still focus on teaching young readers moral values, these books are often concerned with a longer, more epic story than a simplistic narrative, explaining the discrepancy in instances of Theme Four compared to the literature of America or Spain. The development over time can be found in Figure 4.

Figure 4:

The number of books containing theme four (simplistic moral lessons) through time.

3.5 Theme Five: Subversive Children’s Book Elements

‘Subversive elements’ included instances of traditional children’s literature elements being challenged in some way. These included longer or more complex narratives, education (not related to morals, but rather science or social studies), discussion of political or social discourse, or the use of more mature or complex themes. American literature led with 18 occurrences, and both Spanish (6x) and Czech (3x) cultures fell notably behind this number; the occurrence can be seen in Figure 5.

Figure 5:

The number of books containing the theme five (subversive book elements) through time.

American literature’s inclusion of political and social discourse in children’s literature became especially popular after 2016, in which books like A Day in the Life of MarlonBundo, a book specifically written to deride former Vice President Mike Pence’s policies regarding LGBTQI+ people (Perkins, 2018). The book was aimed at young readers, but also evidently aims to appeal to the political beliefs of parents as well, highlighting a marketing tactic more frequently used by American literature. In contrast, Czech literature included subversive elements by discussing stigmatized topics, such as mental health. In the book Medvěd Tuli (2014; eng. Bear Tuli), for example, mental health therapy is discussed. This subverts the stigma and misunderstanding surrounding mental illness in the Czech Republic (Krupchanka et al., 2018). Similarly, Spanish literature that includes a discussion of mental health and emotional intelligence, such as the book Cuentos Para Entender El Mundo (2020; eng. Stories to understand the world, subverts similar mental health stigma present in Spanish culture (Pérez-Santos et al., 2008).

4.1 Future Directions

The data regarding the frequency of each theme demonstrates that the gap between Czech, American, and Spanish academic gender studies may not be directly reflected in cultural products. In other words, while American academia has long contributed to the study of this topic and has demonstrated the importance of diverse representations of gender, the lasting presence of traditional gender roles within recent children’s literature suggests that progress still needs to be made. While many factors influence social progress and an increase in non-traditional representations of gender, cultural products, such as children’s books, may be a helpful indicator to understanding shifting ideas about gender. Since the present study was based on the analysis of the best-selling books in the United States of America, Spain, and Czechia, a demand for more progressive or subversive representations of gender within children’s literature may demonstrate a consumer desire to expose children to different ideas about gender (or other social issues). The present study shows that this desire has increased in both the USA and Spain (with fluctuations during our chosen time frame), but has remained largely stagnant in the Czech Republic.

The surprising finding of this research that was not directly reflected in the thematic analysis itself, is the observable relationship between social issues in the United States of America and book sales. Research on American literature has the benefit of the New York Times Best Seller List, which shows top sellers of different genres for every week of the year. Events like the election of Donald Trump in 2016, controversy over Mike Pence’s stance on LGBTQ youth, and the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, all coincided with the increased popularity of books that directly related to political and social issues. More research using the NYTBSL may be conducted in the future to demonstrate a further correlation between social and political issues with the increased consumption of relevant literature. Therefore, further research could be conducted on the ways in which political and cultural shifts in ideas have impacted the publication and popularity of children’s novels, and the respective gender narratives they tell.