New research reveals that the language in children’s television is reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes, and that little has improved in 60 years. In some cases, the gender bias is getting worse over time.
The new study, published this week in Psychological Science, examined scripts from 98 children’s television programs in the U.S. spanning the years 1960 to 2018. The researchers employed natural language processing tools to examine which words were more likely to be associated with male characters and which were more likely to be associated with female characters. In total, they analyzed 6,600 episodes, 2.7 million sentences and 16 million words. Among the shows studied were classics like The Flintstones (1960) and more modern series like The Powerpuff Girls (2016) and Lost in Space (2018).
In particular, the researchers examined how often male and female characters were portrayed as active agents (those who do) versus passive recipients (those who are done to). They found that boys are “doers” while girls are the “done-tos.” Perhaps most shockingly, when the researchers examined how this language has changed over time, they found that it hadn’t. The gender gap in who takes action in these programs hasn’t improved in six decades.
Male characters also tend to dominate the dialogue in these programs, although this trend has shown modest improvement over time. In 1960, male words (such as he, him, boy, man) were used in the dialogue twice as often as female words (such as she, her, girl, woman). By 2018, children were still hearing the male words 50% more frequently than female words.
Male characters also dominated money talk. The researchers examined how frequently male or female words were used in the same sentence as money-related words, such as “bucks” or “income.” When money-related words appeared in a sentence, the odds of also finding a male word in the sentence were a whopping 24% higher than the odds of finding a female word. Once again, this gender gap remained unchanged over time. Even in 2018, male characters were more likely than female ones to be involved in financial matters.
The researchers found that male words were also more likely to appear alongside terms relating to power, achievement and reward. These terms all relate to agency, or a striving to act and reach goals. And, rather than narrowing, the gender gap in agency has actually been widening over time. “The gap in the odds of finding a male versus female word in the same sentence as an agency-related word increased by about 4% each year over the span of our data,” the authors write.
Given the amount of time children spend watching television, the study authors suggest that those who watch these programs will develop biased ideas about how women and men behave in the real world. “These biases aren’t just about who gets more lines; they’re about who gets to act, lead, and shape the story. Over time, such patterns can quietly teach children that agency belongs more naturally to boys than to girls, even when no one intends that message,” Professor of Psychology at NYU and an author on the paper, Andrei Cimpian, explained in a press release.
AI learning models that train on program scripts pose an additional threat of perpetuating the gender bias. The study authors explain in their paper, “The rising popularity of script-writing programs powered by artificial intelligence (AI), which are trained on language from pre-existing screenplays, adds urgency to the goal of uncovering social biases in the language in children’s media.” As technology continues to evolve, it becomes increasingly important to understand the messages we’re sending.
If women want to achieve equality with men, we need to start with our children and the stories they watch. That includes what is said in those stories and who gets to say it. If we continue to show our children programs where men have more agency, the children will become adults who believe this to be true.