Pilot DAR & I have communicated privately in the past, and he has been very helpful to me too. As he recognised, this wasn't a dig at him directly. It was unforunate that such as nice post as he made originally used the term "fraternity", and someone else used "band of brothers" so adding to the point I brought up.
I do not believe in political correctness just for the sake of it. Having said that, I am noticing more & more that aviation groups, forums and organisations talk the talk about bringing in more girls & women, but don't walk the walk when it comes to small details. Just reading AOPA's recent magazine where they have an article discussing why so few of the world's pilots are women, and what can be done to change that. In the next article there's references to a fraternity (brotherhood), pilots being referred to as "he", rather than "they" etc, etc. At a recent EAA event, the CEO referred to the aviation "fraternity" (I guess he doesn't understand his Latin either
). Yet EAA runs the "Women Soar" program to try and encourage more women into aviation.
These are only tiny aspects to the big picture of encouraging more girls to become involved in aviation, but I believe they have the potential to make a difference. If a young girl is reading about aviation that always has a male context, will their instant mental image of the situation referenced be of a mixed gender group, or of a group of men? Is that more likely to make them feel it is a community where they could join in? Or does it come across that aviation is just populated by men?
I don't believe in
only encouraging girls to get involved in aviation, I believe everyone should be encouraged, regardless of gender, race, colour or creed. The more people who become interested, and stay interested in aviation, the better it is for the aviation
community (not sorority, not fraternity
- I guess something from the one year of Latin I did at school must have stuck) as a whole. So the more women and girls who feel aviation is a place they would be included, so much the better.
No more soapbox for today. Sorry PD, I didn't mean to mess up your thread
