Coming-of-age novels can give readers young and old insight into their own evolving identity and how to navigate a confusing, messy world. But there is another feature of the genre that isn't so positive.
Cornell researchers used computational text analysis to sift through every word of more than 300 American coming-of-age novels published over the last 100 years. By doing so, they identified rigid gender stereotypes in the attributes and occupations of feminine and masculine characters, with the prevalence of gender stereotypes diminishing in recent decades. They also found that gender roles for females were more flexible over time than those for males.
The group's paper, "Are You There, God? It's Me, Gender Bias in 100 Years of Coming-of-Age Novels," published June 7 in the Journal of Research on Adolescence. The lead author is Mary Kate Koch, M.A. '18, Ph.D. '22.
"Like other media and like lots of aspects of our society, these novels reflect fairly entrenched ideas about gender and who people of different genders are supposed to be - so very stereotyped, rigid gender roles," said Jane Mendle, associate professor of psychology in the College of Human Ecology (CHE) and the paper's senior author.
Koch, an adolescent psychologist, first got the idea for the project when, as a doctoral student, she took an information science course that introduced her to a range of text-mining tools that aren't traditionally used in psychology.
One tool in particular intrigued her: "word embedding" models that can analyze the proximity and frequency of specific terms in relation to one another.
"You can use them to measure many things, including bias, so if words like 'home' and 'family' - caregiving kinds of words - are closer to female characters," said Koch, who is now an assistant professor at Gonzaga University, "that might be more indicative of stereotypical portrayals of feminine characters versus if male characters have these proximities to action or agency words."
The researchers consulted several lists of popular and award-winning coming-of-age novels and selected 303 titles published between 1922 and 2022. They conducted three studies on the texts. They measured gender bias in stereotypical associations, traits and occupations; measured how gender stereotypes changed over 100 years of publication and how these changes fit within a historical context; and examined readership data to investigate whether these novels may contribute to gender socialization.
The researchers found that stereotyped gender roles and biases were prevalent throughout the last 100 years, but they changed across different historical cohorts. For example, novels published between 1951 and 1981 had the most statistically significant stereotype associations regarding work roles, with large biases toward feminine stereotypes.
"After World War II, there was societal messaging trying to persuade women to go back to homemaking kinds of activities, because men were coming back from the war. So there's a desire to have men integrate back into some of those careers that women took over," Koch said. "The biases that we see in the novels change alongside the societal and historical periods. I think it's a bit of a reciprocal relationship."
The traits of female characters - such as being communal, caring and agentic - evolved over time, whereas masculine characters continued be represented in an inflexible, action-oriented and emotionless way.
Male protagonists were most likely to have relationships with animals or nature - think "Where the Red Fern Grows" - while female protagonists tended to have significant relationships with other people or have adventures around the home.
The researchers also found that girls were more likely to read books about both genders, but boys typically read only about boys, which meant "they never got to see a diversity of characters and how they acted," Mendle said.
As adolescent psychologists who also happen to be enthusiastic readers of young adult literature, Koch and Mendle were not surprised about the findings. But that doesn't mean they weren't disappointed.
"You hope, as a human citizen, not to find some of these pervasive stereotypes," Koch said. "But then, observing society, these things still feel a bit entrenched. So it's, yes, we found an interesting pattern to show. And then, as a human being, I was like, 'Ah, that's a bummer.'"
Co-authors include Misha Inniss-Thompson '16, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology (CHE), doctoral student Kathleen McCormick and Haily Merritt of Indiana University.
