If you click on the SMH link on the article in the opening post, then it becomes apparent that either a cash strapped Fairfax media has found a lot of money for a production company or that more likely this piece is a paid advertorial, which means that it was signed off by Jetstar management. Which brings me to the following points.

Firstly, the article specifically mentions quotas wrt increasing female participation and;
Secondly, that Jetstar are happy to exploit their female staff for advertising.

It's also interesting (well no it's not but I couldn't be bothered with a segue) that "orange future" is a handle made up entirely to use obfuscation to keep up banter in order to keep this thread at the top of the page. (As we've seen, when no one responds to orange future, then they respond to themselves in order to goad people into a response). We know that orange isn't a Pilot and they have very little knowledge of the industry. Make up your own minds about orange future's motivation here, but the good news is that you can kill off orange future by not responding to someone who's trying to keep an advertorial alive.

A predictable and weak cop out.

I've posted evidence, I've invited you to do the same. If you're unable, that's on you. Nobody here is 'out to get you', but if you think everyone here is simply going to 'take your word for it' without a shred of supporting evidence, you're in the wrong forum.

Good bye.

I think this whole thread and its representative tension just reaffirms one thing; a dopey short term corporate trendy "philosophy" executed with traditional JQ hopelessness. It will fail and cause more damage than gain along the way.

“Firstly, the article specifically mentions quotas wrt increasing female participation”

You are referring to:

"Incentives and quotas have helped reverse this situation,"

Yes, in the past, they have, although they have not been used in the airline industry in Australia to modify the gender makeup of cockpits. Can you name an airline where quotas were used to ensure more women were employed as pilots? More importantly, the article DOES NOT suggest that JQ are planning on introducing them.

You folk really are threatened by alternative points of view. Becoming aggressive simply highlights the lack of conviction you have in your arguments.

Lets come back to this debate in a year or so or maybe 3 and see how many female pilots JQ have fast tracked into the cockpit and how many men were sidelined based solely on gender.

Quote..."You folk really are threatened by alternative points of view. Becoming aggressive simply highlights the lack of conviction you have in your arguments."

Not at all,you just seem to have a view that most don't agree with,how is that" being threatened",Pot calling the kettle black I think

".....you just seem to have a view that most don't agree with...."

But many people think the same as you? Based upon a tiny snapshot of the wider population from this thread?

Can you say group think?

I would lament the many comments (to you)made in this thread,....no one is "threatened" as you would like to put it.Im just trying to understand the picture here,and see both sides,no group thinking at all.You seem "testy" when presented with what I see as plausible retorts to yr view and points.

And this has what to do with aviation exactly? As pointed out ad nauseum there is no pay gap in aviation!

I think you may misunderstand the intention of Orange Futures post. The reason for posting seemingly unrelated information is to keep this thread from dying a natural death, that it ordinarily would. This is a well known forum Public Relations technique, to keep a clearly ideological agenda visible.

Every response (including mine), keeps the meme in people mind in an attempt to persuade and recruit support. Controversy is even better, as it keeps the thread bubbling to the top. Each time you visit the forum, there's the thread at the top and in your field of view. Each and every response, including this one, suits their purposes & agenda. I'm reluctant to post knowing this, and I have only done it to hopefully give some background to the process of forum hijacking the Orange Future has clearly demonstrated. I've only posted it because it has been forced back to the top by OF.

Orange Future will no doubt deny and rebutt this, even argue with itself if required in an effort to keep a zombie thread alive. Responses play right into their hands.

So its over a year since our last discussion.

Im interested to know how many female pilots have been awarded cockpit jobs with Jetstar following the quota system they apparently were going to introduce?

No no you misread..it's 50% at interviews

HR takes care of that..they're mostly all women

They aren't the only ones.

Air Force Camps for young women - Royal Australian Air Force

[rant]
I would suggest that a certain predictable percentage of women will be deemed suitable it probably won't be the same percentage as suitable men - it might be more, might be less.
It won't be 50%.
I have hired 4 women and 6 men in the last 3 years, higher proportion of women hired than in the general pilot population. The women I have hired have been the best candidate on the day and I have never had cause to regret the decision or change my mind about the women I have hired.
...I have had some regrets about a small proportion of the males hired and let one of them go.
Without exception, the women I have hired have worked harder and been unrelentingly professional and dilligent compared to the blokes. They have been more loyal (averaging more than 2 years each) and less inclined to bugger off at the first whiff of something better.
They have all moved on with our blessings and the gratitude of our family business for working so hard for us.
Those blokes sitting back and whinging that the chicks are "taking all the jobs" or "getting all the promotions" probably need to worry less about what's between everyone's legs, and more about their own work ethic and professionalism.
[/rant]

Here is an article about an internal document that's floating around at Google on diversity in the tech industry criticising its ideological echo chamber. Although it extensively references software development, it could readily fit any technical or high stress field.

Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google [Updated]

Female "Quotas" and talk of "gender equity" in any business in my experience means that the Board of the company are under pressure from the feminist lobby - an entity I call "The Old Girls Club" which is at least as powerful as the old boys network and can work publicly due to the current political correctness climate.

By that I mean, these people are treated as saintly campaigners for equality instead of the power hungry **** they really are.

Anyway "quotas" means that any female that applies and is remotely qualified will be appointed. It also usually means that any promotion of a male must be accompanied by a written explanation of why a female didn't get the job.

Unfortunately I've had direct experience of all of the above, including seeing two worthless individuals receive OA's.

When I was in the Australian Defence Force on the 90's and 00's we had a big gender push into many "men only" jobs.

I remember when submarine service opened to women. Flood of applicants initially as expected but then it pretty much dried up. The "hundreds" of women submariners never materialised.

I think aviation is the same. There just aren't the numbers of women interested to make it a 50/50 split. Nothing to do with ability, they probably just want a different career.

This. Why is it so hard to comprehend??

Because it doesn't fit the Feminazi agenda.

Absolutely. They want power positions. I don't see them fighting for a 50% gender split in the plumbing sector.

The Feminazi days are numbered as the experiment is, and was always going to be, a failure.
Poorly thought out and executed, a not uncommon trait, it suffered at the hands of its own bullyingly belligerent incompetence. Normalcy will ultimately return, as unavoidably (albeit sadly for the "culture & diversity" team - yes, there is one..), there's actually an airline to run in there somewhere...

On AM radio talk back this evening the subject of male teachers came up. Many schools said they would love more male teachers but when a position is advertised you get 100+ applications. Maybe 5% will be men. When 95% of the applicants are women then usually the top applicant is a women.

"As much as we would love more male teachers we have to hire the best applicants. If the best applicants aren't men then there isn't really much we can do".

So that is pretty solid proof that having a quota would mean that not the best applicants are getting hired.

There's one place I'd like to see gender equality. HR.

It's no accident that this positive discrimination BS is coming from HR as they're 90% women.

When I see gender equality in HR demonstrated by HR then I'll give due credence to the concept. Until then I'll view it as the nonsense that it is.

Don, you win PPRuNe for today.

Which probably explains why the Jetstar Pilot interview process contains no technical questions but lots of warm and fuzzy stuff on getting on with the captain and resolving differences of opinion on the flight deck.

Or when they ask military pilots: "When did you exceed your customers expectations?"

"Ummm.... by bombing them twice."

"The Old Girls Club which is at least as powerful as the old boys network”

Really? Fewer than a dozen CEO’s in Australia of the top 200 companies are women, less than 5% and yet they wield as much power as the old boys network?

“Anyway quotas means that any female that applies and is remotely qualified will be appointed.

You may have missed the point here; the argument is not exactly what constitutes a quota but rather are quotas actually in play. Which is why after 12 months I returned to pose the question: “how many female pilots have been awarded cockpit jobs with Jetstar following the quota system…..”

The answer thus far being precisely zero.

“This. Why is it so hard to comprehend??”

Not difficult to comprehend at all, it’s very much the case that women don’t see airline flying as a viable career of choice. The two questions that arise are firstly why and secondly what can be done about it.

“They want power positions.”

I suspect they want to be able to choose any career path society offers, just like men. Power, maybe, some people are like that. Are you implying that its bad when women seek power but not when men do?

“The Feminazi days are numbered as the experiment is…..”

I am keen to know exactly what this experiment entailed? Can you shed some light on exactly what you think feminism is about?

And more importantly, what exactly is “normalcy”?

“There's one place I'd like to see gender equality. HR.”

Human resources is a people job and such women tend to gravity towards the role more commonly than men. Should the imbalance be addressed? Of course it should, I am all for it.


“When I see gender equality in HR demonstrated by HR then I'll give due credence to the concept”

How would you like to see this inequality addressed?

“Which probably explains why the Jetstar Pilot interview process contains no technical questions but lots of warm and fuzzy stuff on getting on with the captain and resolving differences of opinion on the flight deck.”

Airlines all over the world are moving away from the technical side into more behavioral based questioning. A technical quiz can be easily gamed and is done so regularly. Behavioral, not so much and yet still important.

It's actually worse than that they actively discourage male HR leaders to leave as companies see HR as an easy way of having women in senior leadership. There was a big article in one of the newspapers on this very issue, with men being told unofficially they will never be promoted, so they had to go and reinvent themselves somewhere else.

Orange future (sic), your warped idealogy stands out for all to see. Your questions are not necessary. Nothing needs to be done about airline flying not being a viable career of choice for women. You asked your question like this fact is a negative or a problem in the industry. It is not. Everyone has choices in life, everyone is entitled to attempt any goal or achievement in life but the nature of many many things in society has delevopled to the extent that somethings in our modern world just aren't suited to everyone.

What can be done about YOUR issues? Nothing. We don't need to change an entire industry so mum can work part-time and be home everyday for school pickup and make the family meal. Unless you can design an aircraft that can fly at speeds that will cover the distances that the market dictates so you can be home every night, stop bleating that there exists a "problem" in our industry.

On the contrary, you should applaud all the people who willing chose their airline career and spend endless nights away from home, yet still love their job and don't complain that their job doesn't suit their lifestyle. (And don't demand or expect someone to foot the bill so you can stay at home to have children too!)

Additionally, to address your point about gender imbalance in HR - why does this need to be addressed? To address the bias that female HR delegates have for other females? Why are you "all for it?" To reiterate, we're all very lucky in this country that we have choices for virtually every facet of our lives, so to insinuate that all "inequalities" must be addressed is ludicrous. This is starting to sound like the breakdown of a civilised, structured, educated modern society.

Well, respectfully, I disagree. I suggest that, like others have said, women are less inclined to WANT a career in airline flying - why do we need to artificially alter what they are interested in doing?

Here is a thought. Is there a quota for female truck drivers? How about female garbage collectors? Female concreters? Of course there isn't because they are blue collar working class jobs. There is an acute shortage of male teachers and nurses but I don't see anyone making a fuss about that.

Pilots, CEO's and politicians. Now they have some standing in the community. They are "high profile" jobs. Better get some quotas in quick to appease all the action groups and grab some quick votes.

orange future,, Google has just given the world an excellent example of just how authoritarian the feminist left actually is. Then of course there was the trader who was fired a few months ago for criticising a senior management hire decision that just happened to be a woman - he didn't even mention her gender.


As for the only X people in the top 200 are women, you might like to add government institutions to your survey.

But that is not all. It is legal and regarded as charitable to run mentoring and promotion classes for women and positively discriminate (see Emily's list) for a man to do the same for men would be universally condemned. Thats how PC we are.

Bugger! Got three sons and two want to fly :( Should have had daughters. The worlds gone f***ed.

Oh and my wife just said "they should interview at least 50% to be midwives to be male!" She thinks JetStars policy is pathetic!

Perhaps the place to start would be ensuring 50% of candidates starting flight school are woman?

Sorry sir, we can't take your money for flight training as we have a gender quota - said no hungry flying school ever.

Deborah Lawrie from Tiger talks about the gender issue in this clip. Worth watching.

22:40, 40:00 are the parts.

How about the quota for LGBTPDGW*, for conjoined twins (there is only one pilot seat per side), for atheists, for blind people, and why don't cockpits have wheelchair access?



*the last few letters are for the dunces and gecko-watchers, who all need to be represented in aviation.

Thats it. What makes women so special that they have special rules set up for them?

How many left handed people were recruited by Jetstar? How many Asian Jews? The list goes on forever.

One rule. Best person for the job.

The end.

I strongly disagree with what you are saying here. My bolding.

It is just as easy to prepare for the "warm & fuzzy" relationship questions as it is the technical.

The evergreen "tell us about a time your disagreed with a supervisor/captain/superior and how you dealt with it" Very easy to have a story ready, true or not, it does not affect the outcome.

There are many HR and consultant companies only too happy to teach you how to "pass" these questions. Some even have question banks for specific airlines.

Also your statement "airlines all over the world..." can you name two with specific examples? Otherwise it is a motherhood statement.

Hope it does not come to having a barcode imprinted on a newly born baby's forehead to indicate gender (50/50 split) and the occupation the baby shall follow based on the next occupation in the computer generated list.

What could be more PC that that.