Wow, what a thread!! Firstly, PilotDar, what a great original post as the others have said, and I must say, within my short experience of aviation from the flying side, apart from a few idiotic PPruners, I have found everyone fantastic, welcoming and being super helpful to me as a stude and willing to pass on their greater knowledge.....be they male or female.
I have spent all my career in a male dominated environment...I have had many old F**ts (male and female) patronise me. One example of such in my professional life was (and this from a female) "I suppose this is all gobledegook to you" when I was lecturing her group on the history of the Battle of Britain...I could list many such incidents and even "oh, you're a girl" or "can I speak to the Curator please", "the new Curators a very young girl, she doesn't know anything" (as an aside I was 29 at the time of this comment!)
Therefore sexism in a male dominated world does not phase me anymore, i'm used to it. The RAF are great, no problems with serving chaps, and I for one am pleased when a man wishes to behave like a gent and pull my chair out for me at dinner or open the door and let me go through it first. I never used to like this, I always used to flare, but now i realise that well, it is rather nice.
My current work colleagues are VERY un-PC, but I don't mind, I give as good as I get and its all good banter. i think maybe sometimes females take themselves and this PC stuff all too seriously. Yes, we should not return to pre-suffragette era, oh no! But I do think we have gone too far the other way sometimes.
As to my flying training. I of course have not yet been on the sharp end of aviation long enough to add much to the debate of sexism in the aviation community. however, what I can say is that I am the only female member of our club and I have received nothing but respect from 98% of the boys. Is this due to my eagerness to muck in with everything ? Maybe, but I love it and I WANT to be as involved as possible, and am considered as just like any other student pilot learning their sport. There are three members who are pains. One of whom is not a pilot but a social member. Until I had words with our CFI on the way this chap was treating me, he treated me like a god, as though i was something truly amazing as he had never met a female pilot before. he took photos at every opportunity even when i was flying solo and taxying back, he got (and still gets) in the way and won't be told. In fact this got to the creepy stage... Also, when planning our annual Fly-In last year, one of the members wives asked if I would bake some cakes....I asked whether she had also asked the single male members...and stated that I had not baked for about 20 years!! She got the message
But from my point of view (and maybe other female pilots) I want to be treated as a pilot (ok, then, Student Pilot before anyone corrects me on the fact that I don't have that brown booklet yet!
) When I am at the club I leave my gender behind and get on with the flying.
Whilst dinosaurs exist, we are never going to get rid of sexism in aviation or anywhere else for that matter. but we can at least alleviate it by female pilots showing that we are equal in our skills to our male colleagues and perhaps even more importantly to the male community who are not aircrew. I believe it was Maggie Thatcher who said that to get on in a male dominated world, a female has to be twice as good as her male counterparts. Something which I strive to be in my professional life.
I leave you with a comment written by a female ATA Lanc pilot...she had just delivered a Lanc to the Squadron and when she stepped out of the aircraft, the bemused aircrew said "Did YOU just fly that?!" Lovely!