Secondly, if they are looking for a job in which they will be taken seriously, they will probably go for one in which they won't be referred to as "ladies", or patronised
Thank you for writing that Young Paul; if I had done I would probably have been lambasted for not being able to take the banter (which most of you should know I am perfectly capable of!!).
You're unlikely to get many responses from non-aviation women as there are not that many who frequent these pages! But most of you guys, in your own inimitable way, have got it right.
1. Women are more likely to have difficulty with spatial awareness. However, they are less likely to bring an ego into the cockpit.
2. They are often brought up differently to boys and are not encouraged towards mechanical things.
3. Old boy network is disappearing thankfully.
I have not experienced any discrimination in the helicopter world but then female heli pilots (of whom I know a few) are still too much of a novelty. Normally we are treated with great care while the blokes get over the surprise.
However, there are many women (of whom I am not one) whose main wish is to have children. Flying is not really conducive to that although it can and has been done but only by women who are particularly determined to have career and family.
I will maintain (although some women may disagree) that it's more nature rather than nurture. There are not many women pilots because they just don't want to do it. It doesn't interest them anymore than it would interest most blokes to become, say, a secretary!!
There are general differences between the male and female brain which research is starting to understand more and more but these differences are not hard and fast rules and so you cannot assume that because someone of one gender can or can't do something, that that applies to all members of that gender.
Just to continue with the sweeping generalisations - women tend to be either very good or absolutely hopeless at these sorts of tasks (e.g. flying). Blokes on the other hand will cluster much more around the average!
Scroggs - male teachers.
1. Teaching has lost the professional status it once had whereby a teacher was considered on a par with doctors, lawyers etc.
2. Teachers' salaries are so pathetic that no bloke who wants to support a wife and child(ren) can afford to do so on those wages.
3. Male teachers are so bloddy petrified these days of having any "allegations" made against them.
Does that help?
Cheers
Whirls
PS Link4 - I'm old enough to be yer mother!!