I’m all for diversity, and thoroughly enjoy working with different people on a daily basis in my current job, however it is male dominated engineering. Saying this though, there are quite a few ladies around whom I do get on with. Although, at the moment its hard not to recognise the huge push by airlines in recruiting female pilots, whether this be from online news posts, remarks in newspapers about the male dominated industry (flightdeck specifically), or
PR pushed out by the airlines (look at the BA FPP page with the pics of female pilots, Aer Lingus’ recent video of their inaugural DUB-LAX flight with an all-female crew, EZYs Amy Johnson Initiative etc etc).
What I’m wondering, is why the big push? Of course yes, a career as an airline pilot for a female offers the same benefits as that of a man. Although, the same can also be said for the careers of becoming a mid-wife, primary school teacher… and cabin crew, for men. Surely as an industry we shouldn’t be focused on the percentage of women to men, but more on training quality and getting the correct person for the job.
Yes diversity is important, but if man A is from Greater London, and lady B also from Greater London, then really, other than their sex,whats the big push to greatly increase the percentage of lady B’s as opposed to men A’s, other than sex just to prove to on lookers that their company is “diverse”in the flight deck. Airlines are diverse companies, employing lots of females in other roles, so whats the problem?
The point of this isn’t to cat fight with anyone on the point, but more of me to gain an understanding of why its so important, and is a genuine question.