women in cockpit

[westhawk]

Men and women different? Gee, I hope that never changes. Viva la difference!

I offer the following as my personal views on the subject of stereotypes in general and of flying with other pilots of various backgrounds in particular. I do not intend to direct my comments to any individual in particular, but to everyone who wishes to operate in a crew environment with effective crew coordination and a clear conscience. If you disagree, that's fine. It's just my opinion. There is no definitive science relied upon. Just my personal observations, readings and world-view. And hopefully, a little practical common sense.

As to sharing the front office with females, I choose to judge them as I do with all other groups. As an individual! One person at a time, to the greatest extent practicable. Judging individual people based upon negative or positive assumptions about the group they belong to is common and maybe even instictive human behavior. Yet any attempt to predict a person's intentions, interests, capabilities or work ethic on the basis of their gender, ethnic or racial grouping is fraught with myriad negative consequences. First, you will often find out that the assumptions were wrong or did not apply to this individual. In addition, if you are found out by the individual to have negative pre-conceptions, you probably won't have their full support to say the least. Positive stereotypes are often deceptive and costly too since you may assume capabilities that are not really there. Lastly, you may find yourself placed in a group that is not held in very high regard by many of your cohorts. It's not just the PC police who will expose you. These days, the flying biz is more political than ever. An effective, if painful way to learn how it feels to be part of a less well regarded group. More importantly, you miss the opportunity to achieve the best results from your interaction with a fellow crewmember. This could be important to the outcome of a flight when the pressure is on.

Sure, some people are determined to live up to the stereotypes. And stereotypes usually have some real basis, even if only in half-truths. But being right only half the time isn't very impressive by any standard. As difficult as it is, as much effort as it requires, we must at least try to judge individuals on their own merit. One at a time. The attributes assigned to a group are collective in nature and may or may not indicate the attributes of an individual. Judge for yourself. Keep your mind open to your own objective observations as much as you are able. In this way, you can truly have a right to your opinions of other individuals whether harsh or charitable. We all judge other people every day. I just believe we should endeavor to do it in the way that we would want others to judge us. So much for the sermon!

I took that online test that was referred to earlier in this thread and quite predictably found it easy to manipulate the results as in most psych profile questionaires. Overly simplistic and therefore not valid. Anyone of average cognitive ability can see through the intent of each question. Too easy to steer the results toward a desired outcome and is therefore more telling regarding how you want to be seen than it is about how you really are. Oh well.

Best regards to all,

Westhawk