What about anti-female attitudes that appear to be systemic within an organisation making the playing field not only tilted towards male pilots but downright embarrrasing towards female pilots.
Anyone here seen the CD put out by CASA in May 2002 called In-Flight Decision Making? It is probably aimed at the trainee pilot or the newly licenced pilot. The CD has a section which has a scenario of a problem with an aircraft (Chieftain) and two different pilots tackling the problem. The male pilot is called Mike (a good solid reliable anglo-saxon name) and the female pilot is called Chantelle (They might as well have put her in a bikini, given her a French accent and enormous boobs). Both these pilots are shown problem solving and, of course, Mike is wonderful, does all the right things, is sensible, intelligent and practical whereas Bambi- sorry Chantelle makes all the wrong decisions backed up by all the wrong thought processes. In other words she's a dill. How she ever got her licence in the first place would have to be questioned.
The problem being all those young male pilots will see this and think that all female pilots are like this and so the discrimination is furthered by our own regulator. Not only that, all these young male pilots will assume that they are better than female pilots and this may lead to Instructional or CRM problems later on.
I do not suggest that Mike be the idiot but perhaps there should have been two male pilots so one could look bad and one could look good.
I have emailed both CASA and The Hon. John Anderson requesting that this CD be withdrawn from distribution but I have had no reply.
I have spoken with AOPA who were not interested and suggested
I take it to the Women Pilots Association - not good enough.
You may think this is a small thing, something trivial but this is the precise way that discrimination is perpetuated. Sometimes the more subtle it is the more effective it is.