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The Cinderella Complex: Word embeddings reveal gender stereotypes in movies and books

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  • Huimin Xu
  • Zhang Zhang
  • Lingfei Wu
  • Cheng-Jun Wang

Abstract

Our analysis of thousands of movies and books reveals how these cultural products weave stereotypical gender roles into morality tales and perpetuate gender inequality through storytelling. Using the word embedding techniques, we reveal the constructed emotional dependency of female characters on male characters in stories. We call this narrative structure “Cinderella complex”, which assumes that women depend on men in the pursuit of a happy, fulfilling life. Our analysis covers a substantial portion of narratives that shape the modern collective memory, including 7,226 books, 6,087 movie synopses, and 1,109 movie scripts. The “Cinderella complex” is observed to exist widely across periods and contexts, reminding how gender stereotypes are deeply rooted in our society. Our analysis of the words surrounding female and male characters shows that the lives of males are adventure-oriented, whereas the lives of females are romantic-relationship oriented. Finally, we demonstrate the social endorsement of gender stereotypes by showing that gender-stereotypical movies are voted more frequently and rated higher.

Suggested Citation

  • Huimin Xu & Zhang Zhang & Lingfei Wu & Cheng-Jun Wang, 2019. "The Cinderella Complex: Word embeddings reveal gender stereotypes in movies and books," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(11), pages 1-18, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0225385
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0225385
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Nikhil Garg & Londa Schiebinger & Dan Jurafsky & James Zou, 2018. "Word embeddings quantify 100 years of gender and ethnic stereotypes," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 115(16), pages 3635-3644, April.
    2. Cristian Candia & C. Jara-Figueroa & Carlos Rodriguez-Sickert & Albert-László Barabási & César A. Hidalgo, 2019. "The universal decay of collective memory and attention," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 3(1), pages 82-91, January.
    3. Ayanna K. Thomas & Peter R. Millar, 2012. "Reducing the Framing Effect in Older and Younger Adults by Encouraging Analytic Processing," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 67(2), pages 139-149.
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    1. Rebecca D. Frank, 2021. "Cinderella's stick: A fairy tale for digital preservation. Yiannis Tzitzikas, Yiannis Marketakis. Berlin: Springer, 2018, 249 pp., € 51.16 (paperback). (ISBN 9783319984872)," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(5), pages 649-652, May.

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