Calm girls who adapt, boys who are rowdy and adventurous. Children's literature is full of gender stereotypes that shape young readers. Now a research group in Vienna has developed an AI tool to measure the stereotypes.

In Sweden, we have the Swedish Children's Book Institute, which collects and analyzes all published children's books every year. A huge amount of work that ends in the Children's Book Testing, a report with statistics on, among other things, the number of girls and boys in leading roles.

It was precisely that statistic that was the starting point for OLIKA 2006. Back then, 70% of the main roles were boys. Since then, a lot has happened. Awareness is higher and many publishers are actively working to make it more equal. For those of you who want to review the representation, try this checklist.

But representation is not enough. We also need to look at how different characters are portrayed, and that's what researchers have focused on. There are many books written about how stereotypical children's books are, but there haven't been many numbers. Until now, perhaps. Because numbers and statistics matter.

What will researchers Laura Vana-Gur and Camilla Damian's model do for gender equality? Will it change the book industry? We hope so! In our books, we constantly work to challenge the stereotype so that all children (and adults!) can identify with it. Troublesome women and sensitive boys, they all need to be included in children's literature!