Gender Role Stereotypes in African Children’s Literature

Abstract

This study looks at the gender role stereotypes in African children‘s literature. It is conducted through a content analysis of the written works of several African writers of children‘s literature in addition to selected oral children‘s literature such as lullabies and folk tales. Looking at oral and written literature enables a better examination of gender stereotypes in children‘s literature as a whole, instead of looking only at written literature which past studies on this topic have done. The analysis is done based on a framework that allows latent gender role stereotypes in both oral and written literature to be analyzed. It answers questions on how gender role stereotypes in African societies are reflected in their children‘s literature. This work is important because despite a lot of research on gender roles and stereotypes in African literature for adults, it has not been replicated in African children‘s literature. In addition to this, previous researches in Europe and North America on similar topics have not included oral literature which this study has included because oral literature is a part of the daily lives of Africans.