GENDER STEREOTYPES IN FAIRY TALES A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Since a fairy tale is considered to be a social piece of writing, it frequently expresses the problems faced by society. The fact that social roles assigned to genders are biased, allows generating a socio-cultural and sociolinguistic portrait of the community of the period. Even more, studies have shown that tales influence on a child’s development is immense and they have the capacity to have an impact on their perception of gender roles, gender prejudice and negatively affect their self-esteem. Whilst fairy tales have the greatest impact on both the child and society, it is advisable to transform traditional roles of women and men and adapt them to the demands of modern life (Warner, 1995; Zipes, 1993). The paper aims to reveal the stereotypes that children of a school gymnasium “Shavnabada” have regarding gender and social roles. Moreover, the research sets out to determine the possible reasons behind the children’s attitude to gender bias. As the case study presented in the article shows, the society manages to brainwash people as early as a school-age. Indeed, school children have already fallen “victims” to the biased gender roles and sexism. The experiment also reveals that the pupils have already acquired their attitudes towards acceptable roles of women and men in society. Specifically, men are breadwinners, whereas women are assigned only the role of homemakers. On the other hand, it was obvious that girls try to overcome prejudice as they consider these stereotypes to be humiliating and even degrading.

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