Are you there, God? It's me, gender bias in 100 years of coming-of-age novels

Abstract

Coming-of-age novels are an important genre, often assigned in schools, that adolescents draw on as they develop their identity and future expectations. Mapping gender stereotypical patterns in coming-of-age novels is critical to understanding how gendered information may be learned during development. In 303 American coming-of-age novels, we used word embeddings to capture evidence of gender stereotypes in the attributes and occupations associated with feminine and masculine characters. Further, we capture dynamic change across 100 years to show that language in coming-of-age novels is becoming more gender-equal (e.g., feminine representation became more agentic). We situate results in historical context to highlight that coming-of-age novels reflect trends in societal values, making them symbols of progress and symptoms of problems.