The Representation of Animals in Ethiopian Child Story Books and Its Implications for Gender Stereotyping

Abstract

Child story books can and do play an important role in understanding Diversity and gender parity by reading of child, teachers, parents, television and or radio journalist. which in ether way child story books are influential in home or at school, but it is given less or no attention in our country context. Thus, the general objective of this study is to assess the representation of Animals and their sex in Ethiopian child story books. To conduct a content analysis 30 teacher in 6 preschools rated the story books they mostly used to read or refer for story telling for children. Through this method the top rated 12 books were selected for analysis which contain a total of 97 stories. wild animals are largely presented 109(67.28%) followed by Domestic animal 44(27.16). Aquatic animals are less represented 1(0.6%) of the story.  The finding for gender responsiveness indicates 90 (73.78%) of people 101(62.34%) of animals are presented as male in the story. Lion and Hayna are the most frequently presented animal only as male and Monkey and Bird as only female. Finally, the finding indicates 65(67%) and 32(33%) of the story are male and female protagonist respectively. From the above finding it is possible to conclude the story books are found to be less gender responsive since in many way males’ depiction is predominant as animals and humans.

Keywords: Child story book, gender responsive, diversity, semiotics