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Why Aren't There More Female Airline Pilots?
It’s a sad fact, but it’s a rarity to find women in the aviation industry. The Air Line Pilots Association, which represents pilots at major and regional carriers in the United States and Canada, says that women make up just 5% of its 53,000 members. Globally, it’s even worse — only 4,000 of the 130,000 airline pilots are women, according to the International Society of Women Airline Pilots. (www.forbes.com) Más...American Airlines claimed at Women in Aviation that over the last couple years over 10% of their new hires are women. FWIW, my initial class at my current airline was 20% women. I feel like Im starting to see more women pilots and more male flight attendants.
Bryce, thanks for the info. Congrats on the new job.
A contributor to the lower percent of women number has to do with the senior pilot group at the major airlines. They were hired at a time when few women applied and hired and that group of pilots (the pre-1990 new hires) still represent a large portion of the total pilot group currently flying at the majors.
The 1990's saw a change in the new hire demographics with a much greater number of women being hired at the majors due to the major airlines being proactive in the hiring of women, some say giving them preferential treatment. That started to bring the percentage of women pilots at the majors higher.
Fast forward to September 11, 2001, the most recent Golden Days of hiring at the majors ended. Hiring at the majors immediately shut down and a large number of their pilots were furloughed. It took the rest of the decade to recall a large percentage of those furloughed pilots and many were still on furlough into the mid-2010's. Some of those deferred recall to a later date for many reasons.
The majors now have new hires filling classes.
To see how women are being represented today, I believe a better metric would be to see the demographics of the current new hire population at the majors and at the regionals which have become the main source of new hires at the majors. The military is providing a lower percentage of pilots as compared to the hiring boom of the 1990's. Important in the current new hire data would seem to me, to be the percent of male applicants and the percent of female applicants offered jobs. Hopefully, the percent of interviewees of each sex offered jobs would be similar.
The 1990's saw a change in the new hire demographics with a much greater number of women being hired at the majors due to the major airlines being proactive in the hiring of women, some say giving them preferential treatment. That started to bring the percentage of women pilots at the majors higher.
Fast forward to September 11, 2001, the most recent Golden Days of hiring at the majors ended. Hiring at the majors immediately shut down and a large number of their pilots were furloughed. It took the rest of the decade to recall a large percentage of those furloughed pilots and many were still on furlough into the mid-2010's. Some of those deferred recall to a later date for many reasons.
The majors now have new hires filling classes.
To see how women are being represented today, I believe a better metric would be to see the demographics of the current new hire population at the majors and at the regionals which have become the main source of new hires at the majors. The military is providing a lower percentage of pilots as compared to the hiring boom of the 1990's. Important in the current new hire data would seem to me, to be the percent of male applicants and the percent of female applicants offered jobs. Hopefully, the percent of interviewees of each sex offered jobs would be similar.
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I know the field of law enforcement is very male-dominated, but because of a lack of female applicants -- at least around here sometimes they'll get 200 applicants and two or three of them might be women.