Females only!

[taybird]

In my experience there are no more, or less, female student pilots than there were 10+ years ago when I was learning.

I don't think that women-only groups necessarily help the situation, because it suggests segregation and special treatment, even if that's not the intention.

I also don't think that there should be an aim or goal to get x% of pilots to be female. Meeting quotas inevitably means that standards have to be changed to accommodate them (this works both ways, by the way - if a group is oversubscribed the cut-off has to be higher, and if a group is under-subscribed the cut-off has to be lower). This in itself leads to inequality between cohorts, which is the exact thing that you don't want. People should be hired on a meritocratic basis and not because of some feature not linked to their ability, such as the colour of their hair or their gender.

I genuinely believe that most women who really want to fly, do fly. And that the numbers we see flying (at least in the Western world) are a reasonably accurate representation of the proportion of women who want to fly. There may be some who still believe 50 year old stereotypes and haven't quite made it into this century. The problem, then, lies with them though and not the rest of society. But trying to force feed a hobby or a career onto people who aren't interested is folly. Supporting those, of any class, any gender, and any ability / disability, who really do want to fly is a much more worthy and relevant cause.