"Where are the girls in children's literature?"

Blogger Adrian Allen at Ms. Magazine recently wrote about a comprehensive study made by the sociology journal of Gender and Society for Young Adult book titles between 1900 and 2000. They found the disheartening results that there was a distinct difference in gender representation within YA book titles: boy protagonists figured prominently 57% of the time, with girls as the lead in 31% of the titles (the rest being made up by animal protagonists with a split of male-to-female of 23: 7.5% ). 

Here is Adrian Allen's article on it:

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/05/25/where-are-the-girls-in-childrens-lit/comment-page-1/#comment-29580

My own take on it ( I have posted this comment in the Ms. blog) is that, as it is in all the arts, male artists/writers are the norm; they are taken more seriously at pursuing the calling of such craft, and as such, proliferate and exist in higher numbers. (See Linda Nochlin’s excellent essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”) Perhaps this is part of the underlying reason for the higher numbers of male protagonists in the YA titles.

When women artists/ writers are taken more seriously and begin to demand more emotional and physical support (household and childrearing duties) from their partners/ spouses, we shall see higher numbers of female writers/artists creating more works with strong, non-stereotyped female leads.