The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare how womanliness and manliness reveal themselves in different children’s books, mainly focusing on the concept of gender, in both text and images aspects. The questions I have chosen to interrogate are the following:
How is the male and female role represented in children's books from a gender perspective, in both images and texts? What gender is generally the main character in children's books? What clothes are the characters wearing in children's books? What kind of occupations do the characters practice in children's books? What kind of qualities or attributes do the characters possess in children's books?
When it comes to the selection of the method, I have chosen the use a qualitative method, where I use both a text and image analysis. The essay is based on Hirdman's and Hardning's gender theories and alsow on Nikolajeva's theorie about male and female. During my study I have come to the conclusion that there has been a certain change when it comes to gender in children's books. Among other things, you are now met by male characters who are emotional and do the cleaning work and female characters who work and are independent and courageous. Despite these changes in child-books you can still feel that the male still covers the main role, reflecting society conciousness.