it has taken me to age 34 to twig that there are NO female characters in Thomas the Tank Engine

[sleeplessbunny]

Just that really.

I don't know if I am more astounded by the fact there are actually no female characters, or the fact that it has taken until yesterday for me to realise, despite watching it practically daily as a child. I always loved watching it (still do )

Both are quite worrying really

Massive x post!

There's Molly and belle as well

at Atruth!!!! laughed out loud at that typo!!!

atruth thought I'd stumbled onto the wrong site this morning

[grin[ Atruth, that's cheered me up after a really shit week. I do agree with the poster who said that it is a sign of attitudes in 1920s though.

Iirc there's a daisy too

Yhere is 'lady' as well a purple engine. She is old and magical in thpmas and the magic railroad?

There are a few female characters, but hardly a fair proportion, and they are hardly treated in an equal way. They are often carriages rather than trains, the humans are rarely doing the same sort of important jobs as male humans. Plus there's the awful episode where Emily learns that she should have just shut up and done the laundry while the boys did the more exciting jobs. I don't like Thomas because of this.

There's a human woman as well - Jane? - she works with Alfie, Jack The Digger etc.

Well, at least there are lots of engines of colour, and it welcomes all shapes and sizes.....

Also Alicia Botti, an opera singer who makes occasional visits to Sodor, and Miss Jenny Packard who runs the construction yard where The Pack are based. She is the only woman with any sort of responsibility on the island. God, I have had to endure far too much of this stuff over the past year.

I think miss Jenny is the foreman of the building site?

Wasn't Thomas first written in the 1950's?

Atruth I actually did a double take when reading that.

Absolutely brilliant typo

Also all the characters in Winnie the Pooh, except Kanga, are male. Even Lumpy who is a very recent addition.

I have just had to google to make sure and somebody replied on a forum that it must be a boy as he like getting dirty, going on adventures and girls don't really like doing that

oh ffs

you do realise that you cannot actually time travel and apply positive discrimination to books written aeons ago by doddery old vicars about trains and aimed little boys.

There are lots of female characters in the modern iterations of Thomas, but I agree with the overall sentiment - they are not really the main ones (the main ones are the SIX - Thomas, Edward, Henry, Gordon, James, and Toby). And don't get me started on the gender roles in Cloudbabies and Waybaloo.

Love that autocorrect!

Aroused by lady trains, eh?

But it's been the same right up until recently, and arguably still an issue now. DS has a Camberwick Green DVD, where boys are soldiers and drive tractors, and girls have babies and run the post office, they just reflected the societal norms of the time.