Expert: D. Norkus - 11/10/2007

Question
hello, this is Kaz who is studying to become a airline pilot in USA. i have couple of questions this time.
i am wondering why there is not many female pilot in pilot industry? i would like to know what cause make it hard for them to be a pilot, and it will be easier for them to be a pilot in the future or not, and how many female pilots are in this industry today.
i am a guy, but i am just curious about it, and i may write some reports about that issue later.
thank you for your time to read my message.
hope to talk to you soon.

Kaz

Answer
Kaz

Personally, I think that even in this new millenium there are so few female pilots as the career is still considered a 'male' career. It is not that is it any 'harder' becoming a pilot for a female but I think being a pilot is still not really encouraged as a possibility to girls in school. There are still cultural and gender stereo types that affect what young girls aspire to be. Since gender discrimination in hiring is unlawful and many companies have a affirmative action policy, the numbers of female pilots have increased but they are still no where near 50% of the pilot population.

In the future, I do think it there will be more females in the career. I remember hearing a speaker at an aviation conference talk about this. Any male dominated profession needs a 'critical mass' it was said to break it wide open for women. Not only so they know it is an option for them but it takes a certain number in the field for them not to be taken as novelties or 'token females'. The numbers of female pilots have increased and at the regional level there are a far greater number than at the majors. Since this is where non-military pilots start their airline careers, in the next few years you will see a huge increase in numbers as these women move on to the major airlines. I have seen it at my airline, as we have more and more females being hired on while most of the captains are male. When they upgrade, the captain ranks will be much a much higher female percentage than it is now.

According to 2006 FAA Airman data, http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/aviation_data_statistics/civil_airmen_statist...
women make up about 6% of the total number of pilots in the United States or about 36,100 of the 597,100 pilots. Of that, there are over 7,200 with Commercial pilot certificates and over 5,000 with Airline Transport Pilot certificates. While there is no hard way to know how many are employed with airlines (unless they disclose their own statistics), I imagine a great majority of those figures are. Perhaps the International Society of Women Airline Pilots has some figures on how many females at with each airline- http://www.iswap.org/

Hope this helps
Dottie