As a parent, this is so relatable. I’m a literacy specialist, and was an English teacher before that, so I’m discerning about the books I buy for my children, as well as the TV they watch, yet there is still a lot of gender disparity. So much so, that by the time my eldest was only three, she was already automatically using male pronouns for characters where the gender was irrelevant (a tiger going on a holiday or the dog that likes to play with its dad are automatically male). I questioned her and she couldn’t articulate it, being only a toddler. It broke my feminist, teacher, mother’s heart.

Another disturbing trend I’ve noticed (this is completely anecdotal but I’d love to see some research on this) is mansplaining in kids tv shows…hear me out…

There are lots of shows with a male main character who has a female best friend, or there’s a group of main characters, where the gender balance is two or more boys, one girl. I noticed in one episode an incident where a male character wanted the do something that the female character disagreed with, but he ignored her advice, which led to a situation that the characters had to solve. After this, the male character admitted his mistake after ANOTHER MALE character tells him what the female character originally said. I’ve seen this pattern at least three times across two different shows. The male character does not always admit that the girl was right.

My kids love these shows, and I don’t want to “ban" them, so instead I’m always interjecting with, “Ruby knows what she’s talking about”, “he should listen to Luna Girl”, etc so that they don’t normalise the attitude that males are automatically right and female opinions don’t matter.

Freakonomics, I would love to see some stats on this issue!