Message to Girls and Women: “Aviation Wants You”
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Salma Al Baloushi was a nursing student when she saw a pilot job ad for Etihad Airways. “I loved the way they wrote the advertisement,” she said in a video, remembering how the ad specifically mentioned the need for both women and men. “The word ‘women’ attracted me a lot.”
Al Baloushi became the first female Emirati pilot at the age of 23. She is one of 4,000 women who make up three percent of pilots in the world, with less than one percent whom are captains, according to the International Society of Women Airline Pilots.
Although Al Baloushi is an example of a female pilot who made it in the last 10 years, Women of Aviation Week, held March 2-8 in lieu of International Women’s Day, sites that the recent number of women pilots is far lower than the 20 percent increase in female pilots that occurred between 1960 and 1980, at the height of the women’s rights movement.
Even when compared to the progress that women have made in other aviation fields such as air traffic controllers, flight dispatchers and aerospace engineers – and other traditionally male-dominated careers as boat operators, police officers, doctors and surgeons – the number of women pilots has been dwindling.
Citing a 2004 study, Women of Aviation Week suggests a reason for this: “People do not undertake activities or careers that they do not believe they can be successful at.” When told that “Men are better at this task,” women feel less qualified.
The aviation industry is still behind when it comes to attracting women to careers in aviation, despite images and media coverage. But the large number of girls who appeared at recent events like Fly It Forward and The Sky’s No Limit, Girls Can Fly Too, which offer free airplane rides to inspire an interest in aviation at an earlier age, are a positive sign.
And women such as Fang Liu, who could become the first woman to lead the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and Fatima Al Kharousi, who was promoted to become the first female airport manager of Etihad Airways, are inspiring to all women out there looking to a career in aviation.