Aviatrix- the future of the skies
Dreams are the cherished aspirations, ambitions and ideals we often think about. Turning them into reality comes with a lot of work most of the time and requires a well-thought out plan. In the 21st century, we often say that impossible things don’t exist, yet we look in the past and get inspired by innovators who discovered things that we currently use and see on a daily basis, like electricity or flight. When it comes to our career goals we could find a very similar pattern of dreaming about a specific job and then following the steps to get hired. Unfortunately, some industries make getting those jobs much more difficult and reject the candidates based only on their gender or race. This bias can also be found in STEM, the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics industries, where male candidates are the majority. “Aviation, in particular, is one of those nongender-neutral occupations. It had been historically considered to be a fixed masculine occupation” (Walton and Politano 68). The aviation industry, for a long period of time, didn’t welcome women with open arms. In order to become a pilot, a candidate has to pass all the medical exams and theoretical exams, which are very hard and eliminate approximately 60% of people. Since the beginning of the history of flight, women had to face prejudice on top of already difficult requirements. Nowadays, there are fewer female pilots than men because the industry characteristics continue to be built on male needs, which by nature discourages more women and stops them from succeeding.
Even though becoming a pilot is supposed to be available to everyone, almost everywhere you go, women don’t have their place at the airport, and it’s been that way for a long time. “Aviatrix” is a term created for female pilots in 1907, which was when the first women flew a powered aircraft. After almost 70 years in 1970, women were finally allowed to join aviation military services like the Air Force. Noticing that the majority of pilots are men, we can also draw a relation between the success rate and the number of existing mentors. Not everyone is a trailblazer, ready to pursue the unknown career path, which could explain why nowadays the percentage of commercial female pilots is only 5%.
Women and men differ not only physically but psychologically as well. Scientists and researchers keep monitoring and looking for proven facts about our brains and capabilities versus our gender. Nowadays, we don’t even classify gender anymore, we stand strongly for equality, but when we go back to the past we discover a pattern where men fall into a different category than women across many parts of life, especially in the professional world. Women were often found as a caretakers, cleaning ladies, cooks and stay-at-home-moms, kept far away from any responsibilities such as executive careers, finance, science, technology or sports. The communities seem to decide that women do a better job at those tasks that require some emotion, care and patience while men were better at making decisions, handling stressful situations, inventing and building the world’s future. It became a natural assumption to us humans, that women are simply not meant to do some jobs and they have no interest in “male” fields. Why then agree and support women who want to become a pilots, which is a typically male profession? Isn’t it scary and dangerous to let women fly? Based on cold scientific calculations, women are more likely than men cause an accident because throughout the entire history of flight women have had less opportunity to spend time in the cockpit. On the blog, “Fly with Eva” Captain Eva shares her stories from the flight deck. In one post she tells the audience a story about a flight where one of the passengers, upon seeing her greeting other passengers said to her, “You? Pilot? You have got to be joking! This does not feel right. Tell me, do you even know the left from your right?” (Marseille 1). Those situations indicate that people don’t trust women as pilots and believe that they could cause a lot of tension or possibly an unsafe flight.
As humans, we often tend to fall into stereotypes and judge everyone and everything we see around us. Sometimes those judgments can cause more harm than we expect. In the aviation field, women have to face prejudice every single day, proving to their male coworkers that they know what they are doing and that they are great at it. Even though it might not seem like that big of problem, it does affect female performance due to the buildup of anxiety and stress. Even those friendly colleagues who genuinely believe in female capabilities, tend to doubt in their skills in critical situations. Neurosexims, is what we call sexism based on our gender and brain capabilities. It can be found everywhere around the world, mostly in STEM careers where women are seen as incapable of doing their job. In the article wrote by Lise Eliot, “Neurosexism: the myth that men and women have different brains,” she describes many pieces of research and sums it up with the conclusion that “most of us remain strapped in the “biosocial straitjackets” that divert a basically unisex brain down one culturally gendered pathway or another” (Eliot 1), which leads us to understand that even though our brains might differ due to our height or weight, they are made the same way and the culture we live in has much more to do with our interests and capabilities than gender itself. There’s no proven facts that women are less capable of flying airplanes than men.
During the summer seasons at every flight school there are always a lot of new faces and the same groups of old friend pilots, practicing and enjoying the time they spend in the air. It is a very friendly but also competitive community where mistakes are not forgiven and can often lead to death. For those reasons, even while pilots try to maintain a nice attitude with eachother, harsh and constructive criticism is present on a daily basis. Pilots, especially student pilots, watch each other’s landings, take offs and flights, looking for the smallest mistake. The very presence of women at the airport is often found to be uncomfortable and uncommon. For ages it has been a male ground where sexist jokes and rude comments about each others flights are a daily routine. When women enter this male world they have two choices: fit in and act like a guy not to stand out in the aviation environment, or act like a women (what people assume is: delicate, shy and feminine) which wakes up men’s hunting spirits and stops them from focusing on their flight lessons. Those are some main reasons why men don’t like to train with women to become a pilot. It simply doesn’t fit into the standards made by men and it’s another stereotype that makes women less successful than men. They are also way more judgmental about women’s performance which leads to another stress factor, knowing that everyone at the airport will be watching every second of your flight waiting for your mistake. As a women, you feel like you can’t make a single one, because you will not be forgiven. Men tend to joke about the high tendency of women crashing airplanes and it is a truth that if a female pilot caused accident you will hear about it more than if a man would do it. People also tend to blame female pilot, as it’s her mistake while when men cause an accident, it is more likely that the machine failed. This shows us the bias found within the aviation community and a huge lack of trust in women’s abilities to fly.
Looking at the accident rates and the place of women in the aviation industry from the stereotypical way of thinking, it is clear that the hangar is not a place for women. Research and statistics show something different though. According to Bazargan and Guzhva “male general aviation pilots are taking more risks than female pilots and those risks lead to more fatal accidents” (Bazargan and Guzhva 966). Those are not facts people would like to talk about, because they change the standard point of view and our imagination. When we think “pilot,” we imagine a man, possibly wearing leather bomber jacket, sunglasses called “Aviators” and maybe is accompanied by a feminine woman wearing beautiful dress. To realize that men are less safe pilots than women changes our system of trusts and beliefs. When we see a woman in the cockpit we often fear and say a little prayer in our head, just to be on the safe side. What if we should have done it whenever a man is the captain? Another research done at Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, was meant to discover and study bias, discrimination and success rates amongst student pilots. According to Miller, “White male students succeed at a rate 10-20 percent greater than female and minority students for the overall flight program” (Miller 10). At the end of the research Miller asked hundreds of students about their experiences at Naval School and their responses varied. Some student pilots were amazed and highly satisfied with their training, some expressed disappointment due to discrimination and harassment. A majority of female student pilots mentioned biases at their training, which could be the reason for their lower success rate. Women should be respected and appreciated even more, not only for becoming outstanding pilots, but for facing a terrifying amount of discrimination on a daily basis. They learned to cope with it and keep their head up, despite the pain and sadness, probably due to their love for aviation. As the above research showed, not only are women not worse pilots then men, but they are better than other gender. They are highly skilled in multitasking and choosing safety over adrenaline and risks, which is what makes them better aviators.
Have you ever been to the Air Show, where all the crazy passionate aviators meet and bring their airplanes from different centuries? The most famous ones are the old models from World Word II with unique paintings on the nose of the airplane. Widely known “Female pin-up art dominated World War II nose art, seeing its Golden Age through the Korean War, tolerated by Army Air Force officials to help boost the morale of the soldiers fighting in stressful wars with high probabilities of death” (Messynessy 1). Female pin-up presents a woman with very feminine shapes, usually not fully dressed, which is characteristic of the 20th century. Its impact on aviation is visible to this day, which makes it very uncomfortable for every aviatrix, female pilot. What woman would love to fly an airplane full of naked girls? It is sexism that in the past had its reasons to support soldiers, but nowadays it is found comforting and maybe even funny only to men. This is another reason why women simply don’t fit in the aviation community that is based on male needs. Another example is the design of some gliders, an aircraft that is similar to the airplane but doesn’t have an engine. A glider is meant to take a pilot for a long few hours flight. In those scenarios the human body, that needs constant hydration at thousand feet above the ground, needs to urinate as well. Unfortunately, gliders were constructed in a way that only male pilot could use the toilet. As Daryll says in his aviation blog “I’ll describe here the system that I think is by far the best … Sorry this discussion is a male centric I don’t have any advice for women glider pilots” (Daryll 1). What should an aviatrix do? Probably don’t fly in the first place? Tinoco and Rivera highlighted in their research that “These three chapters reiterate the need for cockpit design and the human-machine interface of advanced flight deck systems to consider key gender differences in their design, test, and evaluation. Female pilots continue to be underrepresented in the evaluation of aviation equipment” (Tinoco and Rivera 106). A lower percentage of aviatrixes could tolerate being behind an aircraft that is not designed for female needs.
From Amelia Earhart to Anne McClain and Christina Koch, women keep achieving more than men could ever even imagine. “Currently, women make up 34 percent of active NASA astronauts. At the end of the month, NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Christina Koch are scheduled to perform the first ever all-women spacewalk” (Women in the world 1). Those determined aviatrixes that never gave up on their dreams and despite the characteristics of aviation community that tends to favor men, stayed persistent and are now part of the aviation history that has a huge impact on our world. Women in Aviation International is an organization for every single aviatrix around the world that focuses on female success and reunion. There are many more organization like that, including the Ninety-Nines, International Organization of Women Pilots which was found in 1929 by ninety nine women pilots. Their main goal is to support young pilots with many available scholarships and to make sure that all the female pilots will fight for their dreams even though they constantly have to fight for their place and prove themselves at the airport. All the organizations for women have the same idea, to make sure women feel at home at the airports and in the sky, because they do belong there and deserve to be there as much as men. They work as hard as men, if not harder and their place in the aviation community must be available and reachable. As Mitchel, Kristivics and Vermeulen said “The aviation industry, in an attempt to encourage women to take up flying as a career, needs to address many latent issues that provide disincentives to women” (Mitchell and Kristivics and Vermeulen 55). Women can try to help each other and be the support system, but the main problem needs to be addressed and fixed. Discrimination and stereotypes have to be forgotten and those can be only accessed from the male side of the community.
Overall, even though the aviation industry prefers male candidates, women are equally suited, if not better suited pilots, and their success rate shouldn’t be dependent on the level of anxiety that a man causes. All women should be given equal chances to get hired as pilots because they have a lot of knowledge and skills that are irreplaceable. With our world constantly changing and needing improvements, more and more scientists and pilots need to join the team to improve our quality of life and help technology evolve. With women on board this will happen much faster. Let’s leave the stereotypes behind, focus on the future and let women become the best version of themselves, the aviatrixes that reach even higher.
Works Cited Page
Bazargan, Massoud, and Vitaly Guzhva “Impact of Gender, Age and Experience of Pilots on General Aviation Accidents.” Accident Analysis and Prevention. Vol. 43, no. 3. 2011: 962–970. Print.
Eliot Lise, “Neurosexism: the myth that men and women have different brains”, Nature.com, February 27 2019, nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x, Accessed April 14 2019
Marseille Eva, “Do passengers react differently to a female pilot?”, Fly with Eva, April 24 2018, flywitheva.com/passengers-react-differently-female-pilot/, Accessed April 14 2019
Messy Nessy. “Flying Girls: A Compedium of WW2 Airplane Pin-Ups”. Messy Nessy, March messynessychic.com/2015/08/28/flying-girls-a-compendium-of-ww2-airplane-pin-ups/. Accessed 14 April 2019
Miller, Scot, Perceptions of Racial and Gender Bias in Naval Aviation Flight Training. California: Naval Postgraduate School Monterey Ca. 1994. Print.
Mitchell, Jim, Alexandra Kristovics and Leo Vermeulen. “Gender Issues in Aviation: Pilot Perceptions and Employment Relations.” International Journal of Employment Studies. Vol. 14, no. 1. 2006: 35–59. Web.
Ramm Darryl, “ Glider Pee Tubes”, Darryl’s Blog, March 28 2007, darrylramm.wordpress.com/gliderPee-tubes/. Accessed April 13 2019
Tinoco, Janet Kay and Genderie Rivera. “Absent Aviators: Gender Issues in Aviation.” Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal. Vol. 36, no. 1, 2017: 105–107. Print.
Walton, Robert O., and P. Michael Politano. ”Gender-Related Perceptions and Stress, Anxiety, and Depression on the Flight Deck.” Aviation Psychology and Applied Human Factors Vol. 4, no. 2. 2014: 67-73. Print.
WITW, “Nasa head says a women will walk on the moon an potentially Mars”. Women in the World, March 14 2019, womenintheworld.com/2019/03/14/nasa-head-says-a-woman-will-walk-on-the-moon-and-potentially-mars/. Accessed April 14 2019
