Koss, H. G. (1978). Picture book sexism: two steps forward and one step back? ERIC document ED 196 018.

An extensive study of sexism in children's books was made based on the rationale that if society is committed to changing sexist attitudes, these changes will appear in the tools used to inculcate children. For the study, a random sample of one hundred trade books for each of two periods, 1950-53, and 1970-73, was drawn from the Library of Congress catalogs for those years. Results indicated that only a minute increase, .58 %, in female visibility in the text and a modest increase, 16,8 %, in illustrations occurred in children's books in the early 1970s as compared to the early 1950s. Males still cutnumbered females by a proportion of 63,4 % to 36.5 % in terms of texts of children's books and 56,9 % to 43 % in terms of illustrations during the 1970-73 period. Adult male characters were better represented than adult female characters in occupational roles in both periods. In both periods, occupations of male characters were slightly better distributed relative to males in the real population than were occupations of adult female characters. The percentage of instances in which females participated in female-stereotyped activities increased between the two periods in both text and illustration.