I'd love to see the stat of the percentage of female CPL holders that are employed in aviation compared to the percentage of male CPL holders employed in aviation. I reckon a much higher percentage of females that gain their CPL find employment than would males.
Also, by fostering an industry that does not attract applicants from almost HALF of society’s members is also effectively providing a preferential treatment to MEN. It makes it much easier to get an airline job when HALF of your potential competitors don’t even apply.
I call BS on this. 'Fostering an industry'? The 'industry' doesn't discriminate, people do and I've not come across a single person who has discriminated against a woman in my 25 years in the industry.
I recently facilitated a mentoring day with UNSW 3rd year aviation degree students. 5 out of the 23 were female. It's the 21st century. What these days is 'actively discouraging' females from becoming pilots? You're the one that made the allegation that it's the industry that prevents women from starting training as aviators. I'd be interested as to what you think this may actually be.
I worked with a lot of kids in the Air Force cadets. In our senior ranks we often found that we had a much higher representation of female cadets compared to the ratio when they joined. Interestingly though, whilst these young women were very capable, few of them were interested in careers as aviators. They were given the same exposure to aviation activities as their male colleagues, they were encouraged the same as their male colleagues. Given how they performed on promotional courses you could extrapolate that and suggest that they'd be more successful in gaining flying scholarships. Despite encouraging them to apply, they simply weren't interested at the same rate as their male colleagues.
So maybe it actually is the industry, not due to the industry not fostering the interest, maybe some women just aren't interested in aviation as an industry.