The purpose of this research is to analyze six children’s books from a gender perspective and thereby investigate in what way boys and girls respectively are portrayed in books.

My general question is:

How are boys and girls portrayed in children’s books?

This question has been broken down into four minor questions:

What type of clothes are the people wearing? Are people predominantly male or female? Have people specific attributes which are linked to their sex? Are people performing specific actions which are linked to their sex?

In my research I have combined quantitative and qualitative methods and my theoretical framework has been gender.

This study reveals a change in children's books with respect to how the different genders are portrayed. The progression is towards a more equal portrayal but despite this, patterns typical for the respective genders shine through.