Gender Representation in A Multilingual Children’s Book, An Anthology of Indonesian Children’s Stories

Abstract

All children should see themselves in the book they read, thus, representation matters. In some children’s books, male and female are not always present. If they exist, it is important to see how they are represented. This study aims to examine gender representation in An Anthology of Indonesian Children’s Stories published by The Agency for Language Development and Cultivation, The Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology in 2022, by focusing on revealing two aspects. The first is comparing the ratio of male and female protagonists as well as other characters using the quantitative method, and the second is examining the gender role portrayal of the protagonist characters using the qualitative method. The finding shows that male protagonists outnumber female protagonists with a ratio of 7:3. However, although only three out of ten stories have three female protagonists, they are represented as having progressive gender roles: adventurous and empowered. Some stories, unfortunately, still reinforce traditional gender roles.