Ladies on the Flight Deck

[+TSRA]

Aerocat,

I agree 100% that our industry could do a lot more to promote itself as an option for women and other groups of the population. I'd love to see the day where the aviation industry is totally reflective of the general population both ahead of and behind the flight deck door.

The unfortunate thing about many of the "Women in Aviation" groups I've had the pleasure of hearing about from my female co-workers is that they focus so much on "breaking the male dominated barrier." Indeed, a recent article on an old co-pilot of mine said (and I paraphrase, although not that much!) "[Her name] is now a Captain for [company name]. She's a badass who loves to ride bikes and fly planes." The article totally suggests that women need to be a tomboy to become a pilot. From my POV that is selling the wrong product.

As an industry we should not focus on "breaking the barrier" so much as simply promoting that it is a cool industry with progression and is an industry where you can still be whomever you want to be. If a female pilot wants to have a family, cool! Your seniority number is growing while you're gone - have fun, and we'll see you when you come back!

But, we should not artificially increase the number of any group just to make the statistics sheet look good. Doing so only puts people into positions that would otherwise be better filled by more qualified people - be they men, women, white, black, LGBT, whatever.