Will reading Pooh give your daughter an inferiority complex?

I read an article this week about a study that found a bias toward male leads in 20th century children's books. The study found that this bias was even worse when the characters were animals. The study's author, Janice McCabe, an assistant professor of sociology at Florida State University, concludes that:


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"The widespread pattern of underrepresentation of females that we find supports the belief that female characters are less important and interesting than male characters. This may contribute to a sense of unimportance among girls and privilege among boys. The gender inequalities we found may be particularly powerful because they are reinforced by patterns of male-dominated characters in many other aspects of children’s media, including cartoons, G-rated films, video games and even coloring books.”

(You can read the full article here.)

As a mother of two young girls, this got me to thinking about the books I read to them. While some of them seem fairly gender neutral ("Goodnight Moon," "The Sneetches" and "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" by Dr. Suess, "The Very Hungry Catepillar"), my daughter's favorites, "Llama Llama Red Pajama" and "Winnie the Pooh," are definitely dominated by male characters. Even her favorite television show, "Go Diego Go," has a male lead.

So my question is, does this really matter? Will reading too many male dominated books and watching too many male dominated shows really make her feel less important than her male cohorts?

When I think on my own reading and viewing history, I am struck by how many strong female leads there are in my favorite books, shows and movies: Elizabeth Bennett in "Pride and Prejudice" and Anne Shirley in "Anne of Green Gables"; Sidney Bristow in "Alias" and Buffy in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"; Danielle de Barbarac in "Ever After" and Miranda Priestly in "The Devil Wears Prada" (to name a few).

I consider myself very much a feminist and feel that women's contributions to this world are every bit as important as men's. So, since I know for a fact that my own parents read many of the same books to me that I read to my daughters (that is why I picked most of them), are the findings of this study bogus? Am I just an exception to the rule? What is your opinion? What are some of your favorite female leads?