Is acknowledging sex differences anti-feminist?

Tessa Jowell (left) and Melanie Phillips (far right) discuss gender balance in the banking industry
on this week's Question Time.

It’s clear from some of the responses I’ve seen to my New Statesman post that some of its readers found my argument, which centres on sex differences in reading preferences, objectionable and may well have been surprised to see a left-leaning magazine like the NS giving a platform to what they regarded as anti-feminist views.

I don’t accept that acknowledging sex differences is in any way anti-feminist and it’s a mistake to regard such acknowledgements as reflecting either a right or left-wing political perspective, as an exchange on this week’s BBC’s Question Time programme (starts at 14:17 mins) ably demonstrates.

While answering a question on the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards Report published this week, Labour MP Tessa Jowell gave her backing to the report’s recommendation that trading floors become more gender-balanced by admitting more women. The recommendation reflects the view expressed by Jowell that, “women act differently, more consensually [and are] more risk averse.” The claim that women are more risk averse than men is supported by sceintific studies linking risk aversion with testosterone levels in the brain, which tend to be lower in women. A testosterone monitored go-kart race featured in the BBC’s 2005 documentary on sex differences, Brainsex (starts at 24:53 mins) demonstrates this in an entertaining fashion. Unfortunately, while the male-typical trait of risk-taking may have benefits on the racetrack, its effects on the trading floor have been disastrous for the global economy — hence the Commission’s call for a gender-balanced banking industry.

The Commission’s recommendation is in line with the views of Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, who wrote in a recent article, "I have joked that a “male” culture of reckless financial risk taking was at the heart of the global crisis. Studies back this up. Men trade more often—some say 45 percent more often—and risk taking can be mapped to trading room profits and losses. Mixing the genders can help. Companies with more women on their boards have higher sales, higher returns on equity, and higher profitability.­"

One of the studies Lagarde is referring to was carried out by Cambridge scientist John Coates who suggests that an effective way to “to lower extreme levels of testosterone or increase oestrogenic effects on a trading floor is to hire more older men and more women.”

Right-wing newspaper columnist Melanie Phillips dismissed Jowell’s argument, claiming that both men and women are equally susceptible to the “recklessness” that contributed to the economic collapse.

Phillips’ dismissal of sex differences echo the views of Cordelia Fine, the Australian psychologist and author of Delusions of Gender. Published in 2010, this book claims to show “The Real Science Behind Sex Differences” and supposedly debunks many of the recent studies and experiments that suggest innate differences between the sexes. The book has been widely acclaimed in the mainstream media, receiving favourable reviews in both the left-leaning Guardian and the right-leaning Daily Mail for which Phillips writes a regular column. Fine’s “debunkings” are largely dependant on her claims that the studies were not conducted and/or interpreted in an objective and impartial manner. Some of these claims turned out to be no more than ill-founded assumptions made by Fine and were swiftly rebutted in the professional journal The Psychologist. Not surprisingly, the reviews Fine’s book received from her fellow scientists in The Psychologist and other sceintific journals, such as the Biology of Sex Differences, are somewhat different from the ones in the Mail and Guardian.

Regardless of its veracity, Fine’s claim — that there is no such thing as innate sex differences — is embraced by individuals on both sides of the political spectrum and is a card that can be played both ways in arguments concerning inclusivity and gender. By rejecting Jowell’s claim that women are less risk averse than men, Phillips was undermining the credibility of Jowell’s case for including more women in the banking industry. A similar argument – that women will bring nothing new to the table – could be employed against moves to include more women in parliament or the judiciary. If women are going to behave indistinguishably from men in these roles, why should their relative numbers be an issue?

I’ve been hearing a similar argument — that men would have brought nothing new to the table – as a justification for this year’s Greenaway Carnegie women-only judging panel.

Gender-balanced Greenaway and Carnegie Update

My last post was in response to this year’s selection of a women-only Greenaway and Carnegie judging panel and included an email that I’d written to awards organisers urging them to adopt a gender-balanced panel for future awards.

At the end of the post I said that if anything came of it, I’d post an update on this blog.

Well, I’ve yet to receive a response form the awards organisers. I'd cc’d the email to CILIP’s Chief Executive and I did receive a prompt response from CILIP’s Campaign Manager, who told me that he’d forwarded my email to the Co-ordinator and the Chair of awards’ working party who where best placed to answer the “interesting points” I’d raised. He made it clear that they were very busy people who ran the awards on a voluntary basis and so they might take some time to get back to me. I thought I ought to give the organisers the opportunity to respond, which is why I stopped tweeting and blogging about the issue.

After six weeks of waiting I realised that the organisers probably weren’t going to respond to me, so I wrote to the media asking if they would help me raise awareness of the issue. The New Statesman offered me a guest post on their blog, which is reproduced below.

In the post I claim that “the Greenaway and Carnegie panels have for some time been overwhelmingly female.” I verified this by looking at the last few years’ judging panels as listed (or previously listed) on the “Meet the Judges” page of the Greenaway and Carnegie web site. Here’s a table showing what I found.

Year	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	Totals
Female	12	12	11	12	10	9	10	12	13	101
Male	0	0	1	0	2	3	2	1	0	9

And here’s the post from the New Statesman blog.

There is a problem with boys and books — they don’t seem to want to read them as much as girls do. As a result, boys’ average reading abilities are lagging behind that of girls by the equivalent of one year's schooling. I believe this difference in appeal is partly due to a bias towards female tastes in children’s literature and in picture books in particular. Last year’s All Party Parliamentary Boys Reading Commission Report notes that the gap between boys’ and girls’ reading ability is already evident at age 5, which suggests that the problem starts at picture book age.

Although there are plenty of men such as myself writing and illustrating picture books, the gatekeepers in the world of picture books are overwhelmingly female. It’s predominately women publishers that select picture books for publication, women teachers that choose which books to read in nurseries and infant classrooms and women customers that purchase picture books for reading at home. Women aren’t keeping men out of these gatekeeper roles, the imbalance is there because relatively few men are interested in occupying them, but as a consequence picture books tend to reflect female tastes more than male ones.

Even picture books that are intended to appeal primarily to boys reflect the tastes of the mother or grandmother that will usually be buying them as well as the child they’re bought for. Picture book pirates are less prone to combat than their counterparts in other media, monsters and aliens less frightening, vehicles and machines less technically detailed. Elements of danger and threat are tamed down or omitted altogether on the grounds of being unappealing or inappropriate. In short, picture books with boy-friendly themes tend to be cuter and tamer than similarly themed TV shows, films or video games.

I think the failure of picture books to accurately reflect the full range of boys’ tastes is deterring many boys from developing a reading habit. Elements with strong boy-appeal such as combat, peril, villainy and technology that are abundant in U certificate films like The Incredibles are rarely found or diluted in picture books. I believe that one reason many children, especially boys, reject books in favour of films, TV and video games is that these media reflect their tastes more effectively.

I’ve written at length about this issue at coolnotcute.com and made several suggestions as to how male tastes might be better represented in the picture book world. One suggestion is that both sexes should be equally represented on the judging panel of the Kate Greenaway Medal, the high-profile UK children’s book award that usually goes to a picture book illustrator. The award is organised by CILIP, the professional body for UK librarians and the winner is chosen each year by a panel of CILIP members who also chose the winner of the Carnegie Medal for children’s fiction.

The Greenaway and Carnegie Medals are (to quote their web site) “the UK's oldest and most prestigious children's book awards” and widely regarded as children’s literature’s equivalents of the Man Booker Prize. However, while the Man Booker’s judging panels have been consistently gender-balanced since 1997, the Greenaway and Carnegie panels have for some time been overwhelmingly female. Last year there were twelve women and one man on the panel; this year all thirteen judges are women.

The Greenaway and Carnegie have always made an invaluable contribution to raising the profile of children’s books and promoting children’s literacy for both sexes and I don’t wish to detract from this achievement. However, if we want books to appeal to boys as much as girls, shouldn’t the UK’s “most prestigious children’s book awards” reflect male tastes as much as female ones?

I wrote to the awards’ organisers on 19 March to urge them to adopt a gender-balanced panel for future awards, but have yet to receive a response. I realise that adopting a gender-balanced panel would mean over-representing the number of men working as librarians, but surely it’s more important for “children’s” book awards to reflect the gender balance of the books’ intended readers rather than the profession that serves them? If there aren’t enough male librarians to balance a panel of thirteen, men from related professions such as teaching could be included. Or the size of the panel could be reduced until it could be balanced; a panel of five, like that of the Man Booker, would only require two men to balance it.

I recognise that, as professional librarians, the judges will do their best to be objective and take the reading preferences of both sexes into account. But no judge can be entirely objective; two librarians working in the same library might have differing opinions on the best children’s books published last year. Given that there’ll always be some degree of subjectivity, shouldn’t that subjectivity reflect the tastes of both sexes?

I don’t deny that previous year’s panels have sometimes selected books that have been very appealing to boys. And I can’t claim with any certainty that this year’s panel would select different books if it had been gender-balanced rather than women-only. However, I’d maintain that by consistently selecting panels made up overwhelmingly or exclusively of women, year after year, there is likely to be some overall bias in favour of female preferences. And at a time when we are struggling to make books appealing to boys, it makes sense to address this bias.

The Greenaway and Carnegie are wonderful awards and whichever books the judges pick this year will no doubt be worthy of the recognition that the medals bring them. However, these awards would be even more wonderful and the winning books even more worthy of recognition if both sexes were equally involved in choosing them. Such a change would also help to send out the message that books are for boys as much as girls.

For an alternative viewpoint, you might want to check out the comments section beneath the post on the The New Statesman site where book consultant and former Carnegie Greenaway judge, Jake Hope, defends the way the awards are judged and dismisses my call for a gender-balanced panel.

If you've got any thoughts on the issue, for or against, please post a comment below.

A plea for inclusivity: shouldn't the Greenaway & Carnegie reflect male opinions too?

I’d intended to take a break from banging on about gender bias in picture books to concentrate on writing stories for a while, but I felt compelled to return to the issue after last week’s 2013 Greenaway/Carnegie announcement.

Both this year’s shortlists are as impressive as ever. Although I’m only familiar with a few of the books listed, I’ve no doubt that all of them are excellent and worthy of recognition. What is less impressive is the lack of gender-balance on this year’s judging panel; all thirteen judges on the 2013 panel are female.

In Part 1 of COOL not CUTE I wrote this about the 2012 Greenaway/Carnegie panel.

Neither award is gender-specific; they are supposed to recognise excellence in books for children of both sexes. There are thirteen librarians on the 2012 panel; only one of them is male. If this male to female balance reflects that of previous panels, it can be assumed that no one has ever won either the Carnegie or the Greenaway Medal by appealing to the little boys that the panellists once were.*

And in Part 2, I made the following suggestion.

One simple thing that CILIP could do to demonstrate its commitment to encouraging both boys and girls to read is to ensure that both sexes are equally represented on the judging panel for the Kate Greenaway and Carnegie Medals. As the most prestigious book awards in the UK, this would set a fine example to other awards. I realise that this would mean over-representing the number of men in the profession, but what is more important — reflecting the preferences of the profession or of the readership it is meant to serve?*

I recognise that all the judges on this year's panel are experienced children’s librarians that understand the sort of content that appeals to boys, but surely it would have been better to include some male judges who could offer a genuinely male perspective?

As the most prestigious UK children’s book awards, the Greenaway and the Carnegie Awards are the junior equivalent of the Booker Prize. The panel for the Booker has always included judges of both sexes and since 1997 the panel has been made up of either 3 men and 2 women or 3 women and 2 men. Imagine if the Booker’s organisers selected a men-only panel, offering the assurance that all five men had a good awareness of what appealed to women. I suspect that few people in the world of grown-up literature would accept this as an adequate substitute for a gender-balanced judging panel.

If we want to persuade boys that books are for them as much as girls, shouldn’t prestigious book awards such as the Greenaway and the Carnegie give male opinions as much recognition as female ones?

I think they should, so I sent the organisers the following email.

Dear Greenaway and Carnegie Awards Organisers

As the UK’s most important children’s book awards, I recognise the invaluable contribution that the Greenaway and Carnegie make to raising the profile of children’s books and promoting children’s literacy. However, I’m writing to express my dismay at your selection of a women-only judging panel for this year’s awards. 

I’m particularly concerned about the judging of the Greenaway award. I believe that one of the reasons so many boys are turned off reading at an early age is that the first books they encounter, which are usually picture books, tend to reflect female preferences far more than male ones. The overwhelming majority of picture books are both published and bought by women. And it’s usually women teachers and librarians that select picture books for schools and libraries. I believe this has resulted in a female bias in picture book content that’s exacerbating the gap between boys' and girls' reading abilities. I’ve written more about this issue on a blog at coolnotcute.com. 

I don’t doubt the suitability of any of your individual panelists and recognise that as experienced children’s librarians they will understand the sort of content that appeals to boys, but surely it would have been better to have some male judges who could offer a genuinely male perspective? A judge of either sex will inevitably bring a degree of subjectivity to their judgement. They will tend to favour books that reflect their own tastes, that appeal to the child they once were. In a women-only panel, those children will all be girls 

I accept that it’s too late to do anything about this year’s awards, but I urge you to follow the example set by other literary awards, such as the Booker, by selecting a gender-balanced panel from next year onwards. If you can’t find enough male librarians to balance a panel of thirteen you could include men from related professions, such as teaching. Or you could reduce the size of the panel until you can balance it; a panel of five, like that of the Booker, would only require two men to balance. 

I recognise that the organisation of the awards requires a tremendous amount of effort on behalf of yourselves and other individuals and don’t wish to detract from this or undermine the credibility of the awards in any way. I’m sure that whichever books win this year will be worthy of the recognition that the awards will bring. 

However, I think this effort would be even more commendable and the winners even more worthy of recognition if both sexes were equally involved in choosing them. 

Yours sincerely 

Jonathan Emmett

If anything comes of it, I'll post an update on this blog.





Update Feb 2015
* These two paragraphs can no longer be found as shown in the essay, as the essay has been revised and now includes a reference to this campaign.

Have I got this the wrong way around? Publishers responses to COOL not CUTE!

In my last blog post I outlined some of the feedback I’d received from various groups in response to my essay COOL not CUTE. The one group I didn’t cover in that post was picture book publishers as I wanted to address their feedback in this separate post.

I wrote to all the picture book publishers I’ve worked with recently to let them know I was publishing the essay and have heard back from most of them. Most of the publishers that responded acknowledged that the issue was worthy of debate but defended the picture book industry’s current output. Most of them did so by making one or more of the following points.

1. Many picture books currently being published appeal universally to both boys and girls.

I don’t dispute this point and acknowledged it on page 8 of the essay where I wrote that “there are a great many picture books published each year that have genuine cross-gender appeal” and mentioned the collaborations of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler as excellent examples. As I wrote in the essay, my argument relates to the “relative numbers and content of picture books that principally appeal, intentionally or unintentionally, specifically to boys or girls.”

2. Many picture books are published each year with themes with boy-typical appeal such as aliens, dinosaurs, monsters, diggers and pirates.

While these picture books have themes that appeal to boys, my argument is about the ingredients that are used within these themes such as combat or villainy. Many boy-friendly ingredients excluded from picture books are commonly found in similarly-themed films and TV programmes suitable for children of picture book age.

For instance, one picture book theme that’s particularly appealing to boys is pirates. In 2012 Aardman released a U certificate film called The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! which includes all of the Missing Ingredients listed in Part 2 of COOL not CUTE. Here are some specific examples:

Combat: Characters are seen fighting with cutlasses, firing pistols and canons and hitting each other with various objects such as frying pans. The violence in the film is generally non-lethal, but one running joke involves a pirate, Cutlass Liz, killing other pirates by running them through with her sword.

Peril: Characters repeatedly find themselves in life-threatening situations and at one point the hero is almost beheaded by an executioner.

Irredeemable Villainy: The film’s villain is an evil, sabre-wielding incarnation of Queen Victoria, who’s last seen swearing vengeance on the hero.

Although many pirate-themed picture books have been published over the last few years, very few of them contain dangerous, exciting ingredients such as these. I accept that some four-year-old boys will find these ingredients unappealing and I’m not arguing that ALL picture books should include them; but in addition to tamer, cuter picture books about pirates, aliens, dinosaurs, diggers and monsters, there need to be many more wilder, cooler picture books for the children of both sexes who are currently rejecting books in favour of films and TV shows which cater to their tastes.


3. Films and TV shows may have different standards of age-appropriateness to picture books, but that’s because picture books have higher standards.

I’ve suggested that the standards of age-appropriateness applied to picture books should match those of films and TV programmes certificated as age-appropriate for picture book age children. However, some picture book publishers I’ve spoken to in the last few weeks have told me that they would not allow a four-year-old child to watch films such as Star Wars IV: A New Hope or The Incredibles, despite the U certificate indicating that the content of both these films is age-appropriate.

I’ve been using films and TV shows as a measuring stick to judge picture books against. Should it be the other way around? Is it TV and films that are getting it wrong?

The main reason I think it’s reasonable to use film and TV age standards as a measuring stick is that they are judged in a far more impartial manner. TV shows and films have their age-appropriateness assessed by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), an independent organisation that has a statutory responsibility to make such assessments.

To ensure that its judgements reflects public attitudes, the BBFC commissions regular public consultations and revises its guidelines accordingly. A report on the last consultation, comprising of 8700 interviews, can be found here on the BBFC web site. An appendix on page 79 of the report outlines the methods that were used to obtain a demographically diverse sample that represents the public as a whole.

I think this demographic diversity of views, including an equal representation of both sexes, goes a long way towards explaining the differing standards of age-appropriateness between films/TV and picture books. I think the more restrictive standards of age-appropriateness evident in picture books reflect the views of a far narrower demographic, and one that I’ve argued in COOL not CUTE is overwhelmingly female.



What do you think?
Are there any flaws in my arguments?

Have I misrepresented the counter-arguments?

Have I omitted an important counter-argument?

If so, let me know and join the debate using the comments box/link below!

A View from Above the Parapet

People working within the picture book industry are reluctant to stick their heads above the parapet
and express their views publicly on this issue 

I set up this blog because I wanted to start a debate about a female bias in picture book content, which, in my view, is resulting in the reading habit being broken at an early age for many boys. Visitors might have noticed that, although I can be emailed through my main web site, there’s been no email link on this blog until now. This was because I was hoping that people would participate in the debate by posting their responses to COOL not CUTE and the other essays in the comments section of the blog where other visitors could read and respond to them. I’ve tried to make it clear that ALL comments, supportive or critical of my argument, are welcome. So far, no one has posted a comment on the blog and while some people have responded to me publicly through twitter, most have opted to respond to me privately, via email, phone or in person. I’m going to share some of this feedback in this and the next post.

One email I received was from a content creator who’s been working in the picture book industry for longer than I have. They began by saying, “Thank you so much for articulating, in a calm and reasoned manner, what I've been frustrated by for many years,”* and went on to outline their experiences with several publishers where they had “come up against the cosy censorship and self-censorship” that I’d described.

Their comments seemed so pertinent that I wrote back to them asking if they’d post something similar in the comments section of the blog, without pointing the finger at any individual publishers. In their response they explained that, “the problem with accusing the gatekeepers of conscious or unconscious bias is that they are, unfortunately, still the gatekeepers,” and went on to say that they’d “got many very good female friends in publishing who would be completely outraged at the idea that they might not know what's best for boys. And that's my friends! So, unfortunately, I can't be the one to raise my head above the parapet.”*

I think this response explains the reluctance many people within the industry have towards expressing their views on this issue publicly.

Several of the people I’ve had responses from are picture book illustrators. When I was writing the essay I’d assumed that the predominance of “cute” over “cool” was partly a reflection of the personal preferences of many illustrators and had suggested that illustrators with such preferences might be drawn to working in the picture book industry. However some of the comments I’ve received have made me reassess this view.

One illustrator made this comment about their experience at art college:

“It was funny how the idea' of 'cool' instantly reversed from a 'macho' GCSE school to a more 'feminine' art education and I think this was even reflected in ideas of what is good (suitable) art and bad.”*

This suggests that, in some instances, illustrators may be encouraged to suppress their more boy-typical preferences as part of their training.

Other illustrators I subsequently heard from seemed to have had a relatively impartial training (or were self taught) but described being steered away from producing boy-friendly content once they began working in the industry. Two of them made the point that the cuteness that characterises much of their work was a reflection of supply and demand rather than personal preference. They both said they would like to work on more picture books with cooler or darker content, but could rarely get commissioned to do so. And, as one illustrator commented, they needed to “pay the bills” like everyone else. It wasn’t that these illustrators didn’t enjoy working on cute picture books, it’s just that they would have liked to work on some cool books as well.

I suspect that another reason that people both inside and outside the industry have been reluctant to post comments is because the acceptance of boy-typical or girl-typical preferences is often dismissed or condemned as sexism. I should say that - so far – no one has accused me of this in their responses.

The word “typical” is important in these descriptions. While some of the parents that have contacted me have told me that the essay reflects their experiences with their sons, others have told me that their sons would not like some of the content, such as combat, peril and villainy, that I’ve identified as having boy-typical appeal. Other parents have told me that their daughters find this same content extremely appealing and made the point that the differences in content between picture books and other media is driving children of both sexes away from books and towards TV and films.

I’d tried to acknowledge these last two points at the beginning of Part 2 of COOL not CUTE where I said that “there will be girls who find all the ingredients I’ve listed very appealing and there will be boys who find none of them appealing.” Throughout that essay I made a point of referring to “many” boys preferences, rather than “all” boys or even “most” boys. The essay also acknowledges that, while I regard these preferences as boy-typical, they are shared by “many” girls. However it’s a long essay, so I can understand that these distinctions and qualifications may have been lost in the mix for some readers.

Although I’d still like people to share their comments and criticisms using the comments sections of this blog, I’ve now added an email link on the right for those who’d prefer to email me instead. As always I’m interested in hearing ANY comments — for or against.

Although I’ve had feedback from authors, illustrators, parents and a couple of reviewers, I’d be particularly interested to hear from infants teachers or children’s librarians as I’ve yet to hear anything from anyone in either of these groups.

The other group I have heard from is publishers and I’m going to address some of their comments and criticisms in my next post.

In the meantime if you are willing to join me “above the parapet”, please use the comments box/link below!


* The quotes in this post are used with permission.

Why it’s a bad idea to try to champion books by discrediting other media

Evangelists for children's books are not doing themselves or books any favours by attacking children's TV or films 

I’ve attended several children’s book events where speakers have tried to champion books to a young audience by discrediting other media and my heart always sinks when I hear them doing it. More often than not, films and television are the targets.

The oft repeated line that “the pictures are better in books than in films or television because you have to create them in your imagination,” is fine when presented as a subjective opinion.  However it's often presented as an objective statement, in which case it won’t ring true with many children brought up in an age when TV and film-makers compete to outdo each other with increasingly imaginative visuals. If a film is adapted from a book a child has read, sometimes the images on the screen will be disappointing in comparison to what that child has imagined, but on other occasions the screen versions will be more vivid, characterful and spectacular. I re-read all the Lord of the Rings books to my son around the time that Peter Jackson’s films were released in the cinema. Much as I admire the scope of Tolkien’s imagination, his prose is often pedestrian and his dialogue perfunctory and I much prefer watching the film adaptations, with Alan Lee’s masterful production designs, to reading the original books.

And the claim that “the pictures in your imagination are better” feels even more inappropriate and misjudged if there are picture book authors, illustrators and readers attending the event. I don’t think any of my picture books would have been improved by removing the pictures and leaving the readers to imagine them for themselves; the illustrations are a crucial part of a picture book’s appeal.

Worse still are the ambassadors for books who go one step further by claiming that watching TV will rot your brains. On two occasions I’ve heard such statements accompanied by readings of the song the Oompa-Loompas sing on Mike Teavee’s exit from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Here’s what the Oompa-Loompas have to sing on the subject of television (the capitalisation is Dahl’s):

IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD!

IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!

IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!

IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND

HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND

A FANTASY A  FAIRYLAND!

HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!

HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!

HE CANNOT THINK - HE ONLY SEES!

Having denigrated television in this way, the Oompa-Loompas go on to sing the praises (literally) of books. While I enjoy much of Roald Dahl's work, I feel that this song crosses the line from amusing satire into prejudiced propaganda in a way that the other Oompah-Loompas songs don’t. Mike Teavee’s vice is one of overindulgence; he overindulges in television in the same way that Augustus Gloop overindulges in chocolate.  Both things are bad in excess, but Dahl does not have the Oompa-Loompas denigrate chocolate in Gloop's exit song.

I don’t think that ambassadors for books are doing themselves or books any favours by attacking TV, films or video games in this way. Most children listening will know from first hand experience how appealing and satisfying these other media can be.  So by attempting to discredit them an ambassador undermines their own credibility. If an ambassador says they hate something that a child knows and loves, why should a child trust that ambassador’s judgment when he or she proclaims that books are something that ought to be loved?

I think it’s nearly always better to work with the grain of a child’s enthusiasm rather than against it when promoting books. If a child tells you they don’t like books, ask them what they do like. If it’s TV, ask them about their favourite programmes and why they like them.  Try to engage with and understand their enthusiasm — this is easy if you like the same programmes yourself. Then, when you understand what it is the child likes about the programme and, perhaps more importantly, when the child has understood that you understand this, tell them about a book they might like that contains the same sort of content.

This approach can be made to work for most children of most ages – but not all. If a child of picture book age says they like a film like Star Wars or a TV show like Ben 10, there’s little an ambassador for books can do because, as I’ve argued in COOL not CUTE, there are no picture books that match the content of Star Wars or Ben 10.  Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of picture book age children that like this sort of content  — and most of them are boys.

If the Tables were Turned - Hollywood and the Bechdel Test

In an early draft of COOL not CUTE, the section headed The Uneven Playing Field included the following paragraph about the Hollywood film industry

It’s not unusual for an industry to have a gender bias in its output. It’s often asserted that the Hollywood film industry is biased towards producing films that appeal to men and boys more than women and girls. This assertion is supported by the small number of Hollywood films that pass the Bechdel Test⁠. This bias is usually attributed to the overwhelming dominance of men in the industry, particularly among those responsible for commissioning films. The male-bias in the industry is characterised in the comments of one script-writing student who claims that she was told by her professors that the audience "only wanted white, straight, male leads" and not, as she quotes a male industry professional as saying, "a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about."⁠

Having made this comparison, I felt obliged to spend several paragraphs qualifying it. I acknowledged that, while there were very few men in commissioning positions in the picture book Industry, there were many men, such as myself, writing and illustrating picture books. That while it’s sometimes claimed that the predominance of men in the Hollywood film industry is as a result of anti-female employment discrimination, I’m not aware of any anti-male employment discrimination in the picture book industry. And that, unlike Hollywood, the picture book industry generally recognises it has a responsibility to produce material that will appeal to both boys and girls.

An editor that read this draft persuaded me to cut this passage on the grounds that, while the comparison had some relevance, by spending so much time qualifying it I risked distracting readers from my essay's main argument.

In my second essay NATURE and NURTURE, in the section headed If the Tables were Turned, I considered what the picture book industry’s output might be like if it was dominated by men instead of women and concluded that “girls would be getting a far rawer deal than boys currently are.” The conspicuously male-centric output of the male-dominated Hollywood film industry would seem to support this opinion.

However, while the degree of gender bias in the picture book industry is relatively minor in comparison to that of Hollywood, I think its consequences may be more serious. The picture book industry holds a more responsible role than the Hollywood film industry as the advantages of being literate are far greater than the advantages of being cineliterate. As I stated in the conclusion to Part 1 of COOL not CUTE, “literacy is an essential life skill, fundamental to an individual’s ability to access and understand information and communicate effectively. So reflecting the reading preferences of one sex more than another is arguably an equal opportunities issue.”

The Gender Equality Paradox

This blog has now been online for 24 hours. Thanks to everyone that has sent me comments, feedback and links to relevant material including this 2010 Norwegian documentary.  I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the debate around innate sex differences and I’ve just added it to the further viewing list at the end of my NATURE and NURTURE essay. The documentary is in English and Norwegian with English subtitles.

The Global Gender Gap Report benchmarks the national gender gaps of 135 countries on economic, political, education and health-based criteria. The report includes an index ranking countries in terms of their sex equality.  The top of the index is dominated by the Nordic countries. In 2008 Norway came first, in 2012 it came third behind Iceland and Finland.

Norway’s high ranking in the index is reflected in the large number of women in professions such as politics, law and medicine. Despite this, young Norwegians’ career choices are more traditional now than they were 15 years ago. Norway has fewer women working in male-typical professions such as engineering and fewer men working in female-typical professions such as nursing than other countries with far less sex equality. This documentary explores this paradox and includes interviews with experts on both sides of the innate sex differences debate.