A Conservative MP has hit back after a Spanish politician blamed beloved cartoon Peppa Pig for the lack of women in the construction industry.
Marta Serrano, the country’s secretary general for land transport, said the show perpetuates stereotypes by always depicting burly men – or, more accurately, male animals – in worker roles.
Programmes like Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol present a ‘social and cultural challenge’, the MP said, because ‘those who work fixing the roads are strong men’.
But Greg Smith MP described her criticism of the porcine icon as ‘absolute nonsense’.
He told Metro: ‘Clearly this attack comes from someone who has never seen it and clearly missed Mummy Pig the firefighter, Miss Rabbit the pilot and a further array of positive female role models.
‘When they start attacking kids’ cartoons, you really know the left have run out of road.’
The Mid Buckinghamshire MP, a father of three, said Peppa Pig is ‘humorously written and entertaining for the whole family’.
Serrano, a civil engineer by trade, told a conference for female road builders that her own daughter did not think women belonged in the transport industry.
She said: ‘We are teaching girls that the road sector is not for them and is a man’s thing.
‘It is something that impacts them from a young age and, if they do not have that awareness, it is very difficult for them to choose us in secondary school.’
In Spain, only around 11% of the road maintenance workforce is made up of women.
Serrano pointed out that her own department has not yet achieved gender parity, saying 40% of staff are women compared to around 54% across the government.
The Spanish Ministry of Transport is due to release a new gender-focused guide for employers in the transport sector at the start of next year.
It’s not the first time Peppa Pig has received criticism from an unexpected source.
In 2022, a Russian politician made the bizarre claim that the show was an example of LGBTQ+ ‘propaganda’.
As an example, MP Alexander Khinshtein said: ‘In one episode a polar bear is drawing a portrait of her family and says: “I live with my mummy and my other mummy.”‘
And in a tongue-in-cheek article for the British Medical Journal in 2017, a Sheffield GP took aim at the cartoon’s Dr Brown Bear, claiming he has a ‘disregard for confidentiality, parental consent, [and] record keeping’.
Dr Catherine Bell also raised apparent examples of ‘unnecessary prescribing’, such as giving a piglet with a facial rash medicine despite saying the issue was likely to clear up regardless.
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