Mercenary: I've also flown with several lady pilots (one Captain and the rest FOs), who, except for looks, better 'aftershave lotion' etc, are no different in their jobs as pilots. Some who have long legs remind me of just why I like women in a uniform...oh well. My company hired ladies who have the same amount of flying hours as the guys. Fortunately the company wanted the same sort of mixed flying backgrounds as with the other pilots: they wanted an aggressive career, whereby the pilots flew at least two or three high-performance turbine machines, instead of just a B-1900, ATR or a C-141 etc. But solid experience reportedly was not always the case at another US airlines years ago, due to court sanctioned quotas- or maybe the fear of them.
It is well known in the industry, and in a way, I could feel sorry for some of those pilots, who due to very little experience, had major handicaps to overcome-but the pilots applied for the jobs. Some probably did really well. Much more experienced pilots, even some ladies, were excluded from being accepted. A different possible problem reportedly involved other people who were allowed to conduct interviews (chat with a psychiatrist...), which had nothing to do with aviation, or even why the applicant wanted to spend a career there. Various (possibly political)agendas were at work. Overall, certain methods to either comply with, or avoid government-imposed quotas, created much of the controversy that still exists, several years later, in the US industry.
