I’m lucky enough to work in animation, in a studio in South Africa where a third of our employees (and half our 3D department) are women who decidedly don’t suck.

Neither do our female characters, which is particularly relevant in a country ravaged by horrific gender violence. We don’t just have to deal with rape, we have to deal with baby rape and one of the worst AIDS rates in the world.

South Africa is dealing with this in some interesting ways. We have the only Sesame Street with an HIV-positive muppet, who is, not by accident, a precocious little fluffly sunshiny GIRL called Kami.

One of the best animation shorts to come out of this country was Lara Foot-Newton & Gerhard Marx’s painful and evocative stop-motion, And There In the Dust, which interrogated the rape of a nine month old baby in 2001. Of course, that’s not suitable viewing for young kids, but the subject matter speaks volumes for the need for inculcating strong girl characters in our culture.

It’s not just about preventing violence or encouraging the value of girls, but encouraging girls to value themselves, to give them kickass role models to look up to.

Ultimately, it shouldn’t be about gender agendas or creating stale cardboard figureheads, but developing rich, nuanced characters who hold a story whatever their chromosome combo.

A couple of things I’d like to respond to from other letter writers:

The argument that men can’t write women or vice versa is preposterous. If the characters are thoroughly realised, you should be able to climb inside their heads whatever their sex or species, whether it’s an alien amoeba or a girl who dreams of battling alien amoebas.

Do I think we could do with more female protagonists? There’s no doubt. We’re already seeing it in TV series from The Powerpuff Girls to Dora the Explorer, Atomic Betty, Kim Possible and The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, to name but a few.

As for the movies, both Brad Bird and that other animation rockstar, Chris Sanders write great female characters. Dorey stole the show in Finding Nemo. Elastigirl struggles with that favourite Broadsheet hot topic, kids versus career and Lilo was one of the greatest James Dean-style rebels in the under 10 age range. And while we’re on it, one of the greatest moments in kids’ animation had to be the scene where Fiona rejected the princess fantasy to stay an ogre in Shrek 1.

As for Toy Story recast with Bratz versus Barbie, let’s remember that in a previous incarnation, before she was a drag queen hooker (let’s face it, who else wears heels like that), Barbie was once an astronaut too.

Anonymous,

I'd never compare the South African industry or HIV-positive muppets or art-film shorts and especially not the animation studio where I work (incidentally, one of the largest on the continent) with Pixar. That's just silly.

The point was that in a country where gender violence is so extreme, we're possibly more sensitised to the real need to portray strong dynamic girl characters than in other countries.

Interestingly, the local cinemas decided to screen And There In The Dust (the stop-motion short dealing with the real life rape of a nine month old baby girl, Tsephang) before Sin City . It was a very strange, but inspired decision. Difficult to treat Rodriguez' sexed up glorification of child rape in the opening scene as light entertainment after a harrowing animated short dealing with the real thing.