Book characters are four times more likely to be male than female, a gender bias study has revealed

Characters in books are about four times more likely to be male than female, a new study of gender bias in literature has revealed. Researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering used artificial intelligence to examine more than 3,000 English-language books ranging from science fiction and adventure, to mystery and romance - across short stories, poetry and novels. The team found male characters appeared four times as often as females across the books, although that reduced when the author of the work was female. There were also more negative terms used in connection with the female characters such as'weak' and'stupid' compared to'strong' and'power' used for men. 'Gender bias is real, and when we see females four times less in literature, it has a subliminal impact on people consuming the culture,' said author Mayank Kejriwal.