Interesting, and she has a point

A Censored History of Ladies in YA Fiction

Within the pages of these books, we have girl stories. That is, stories about what happens to girls, not books for girls. There’s physical violence, romance of all shades (between a girl and a boy, a girl and more than one boy, a girl and a girl), sexual violence, self-harm, tough but real language, and sex/sexuality. And sure, many of the books written by women that are challenged have male main characters, but the problem goes back to what S. E. Hinton was told when she launched this ship in the first place: you can’t be a woman and be taken seriously.

Call them by any name you want, but these challenges stem from fears about girls’ stories coming to the front and being told. Men have their novels challenged, too, but less frequently and, more likely than not, for reasons similar to why women’s novels are: the fear of something different (anything outside the “mainstream” white, straight male standard). Blume has more titles on the most-challenged list than any other author — even Robert Cormier could only muster three — because being female and writing about issues girls face are challenge- and ban- worthy actions indeed.

Well, I knew that, but I find it interesting that the bias affects women but not men

Those extra pounds can hurt you at work, ladies: Overweight women earn less, get passed over for jobs, says new study

Packing a few extra pounds can hurt a woman's salary and even her ability to get a job, mounting research shows. Yet while women tend to get penalized by the pound, men don't, and perhaps they even gain from girth.

Is this surprising?

Gender Bias Uncovered in Children's Books With Male Characters, Including Male Animals, Leading the Fictional Pack

Among the study's findings:

• Males are central characters in 57 percent of children's books published per year, while only 31 percent have female central characters.
  
• No more than 33 percent of children's books published in any given year contain central characters that are adult women or female animals, but adult men and male animals appear in up to 100 percent of books.
  
• Male animals are central characters in more than 23 percent of books per year, while female animals are in only 7.5 percent.
  
• On average, 36.5 percent of books in each year studied include a male in the title, compared to 17.5 percent that include a female.
  
• Although books published in the 1990s came close to parity for human characters (with a ratio of 0.9:1 for child characters; 1.2:1 for adult characters), a significant disparity of nearly 2 to 1 remains for male animal characters versus female.
  

Here's the citation: J. McCabe, E. Fairchild, L. Grauerholz, B. A. Pescosolido, D. Tope. Gender in Twentieth-Century Children's Books: Patterns of Disparity in Titles and Central Characters. Gender & Society, 2011; 25 (2): 197 DOI: 10.1177/0891243211398358 [The PDF is available there for free!] Via LISNews.