International Policy and Development Faculty Insight Series with Prof. Anjali Adukia- What we teach about race and gender: Representation in images and text of children’s books Fri., May 07, 2021 | 9:00 AM — 10:00 AM A link will be sent to registered guests Chicago, IL 60637 United States Sponsored By: Office of Admissions Books shape how children learn about society and social norms, in part through the representation of different characters. To better understand the messages children encounter in books, we introduce new machine-led methods for systematically converting images into data. We apply these image tools, along with established text analysis methods, to measure the representation of race, gender, and age in children’s books commonly found in US schools and homes over the last century. We find that books selected to highlight people of color, or females of all races, have increasingly over time depicted characters with darker skin tones; "mainstream" books, by contrast, over the last two decades have increasingly depicted chromatically ambiguous characters with an increase in lighter skin tones. Children are consistently depicted with lighter skin than adults, despite no systematic differences in skin tones by age. Comparing images and text, we find that females are more represented in images than in text. There is a persistent disproportionate representation of males, particularly White males, and lighter-skinned people relative to darker-skinned people. Our data provide a view into the "black box" of education through children’s books in US schools and homes, highlighting what has changed and what has endured. Register Now Recent News More news Student Profile: Namuka Ishii, MPP Class of 2024 Thu., May 02, 2024 Student Profile: Carrie Collins, MPP Class of 2024 Tue., April 30, 2024 Alumni Profile: Eloísa Ávila-Uribe, MACRM’23 Fri., April 26, 2024