Fairy tales are a common resource for young children to learn a language or understand how a society works. However, gender bias, e.g., stereotypical gender roles, in this literature may cause harm and skew children's world view. Instead of decades of qualitative and manual analysis of gender bias in fairy tales, we computationally analyze gender bias in a fairy tale dataset containing 624 fairy tales from 7 different cultures. We specifically examine gender difference in terms of moral foundations, which are measures of human morality, and events, which reveal human activities associated with each character. We find that the number of male characters is two times that of female characters, showing a disproportionate gender representation. Our analysis further reveal stereotypical portrayals of both male and female characters in terms of moral foundations and events. Female characters turn out more associated with care-, loyalty- and sanctity- related moral words, while male characters are more associated with fairness- and authority- related moral words. Female characters' events are often about emotion (e.g., weep), appearance (e.g., comb), household (e.g., bake), etc.; while male characters' events are more about profession (e.g., hunt), violence (e.g., destroy), justice (e.g., judge), etc. Gender bias in terms of moral foundations shows an obvious difference across cultures. For example, female characters are more associated with care and sanctity in high uncertainty-avoidance cultures which are less open to changes and unpredictability. Based on the results, we propose implications for children's literature and early literacy research.
翻译:童话故事是幼儿学习一种语言或理解社会如何运作的共同资源,然而,在这种文献中,性别偏见,例如陈规定型性别角色,可能会造成损害,扭曲儿童的世界观。我们用数十年来对童话故事中的性别偏见进行定性和人工分析,而不是对童话故事中的性别偏见进行数十年的定性和人工分析,而是在包含7个不同文化624个童话故事的童话数据集中进行性别偏见分析。我们特别研究道德基础方面的性别差异,这些道德基础是人类道德的衡量标准,事件揭示了与每个特性相关的人类活动。我们发现,男性人物的数量是女性人物的两倍,表现出不成比例的性别代表性。我们的分析还进一步揭示了道德基础和事件的陈规定型形象。女性人物与护理、忠诚和神圣相关的道德词词词更加相关,而男性角色与公平和权威相关的道德词词词更为相关。女性角色事件往往与情感有关(如哭泣)、外表(如梳子)、家庭(如面包)、家庭角色(如面包)的两倍,等等。我们的分析进一步揭示了男女角色在道德基础上的角色上的陈规定性(例如,性别价值)更明显地展示了道德背景中,以及性别方面,以及偏见等。