More Women Pilots Needed!

Posted by Helen Krasner Jul 13, 2008

It's the 21st century, but there are still very few women in the aviation world. In the UK they represent 6% of private pilots, and 2-3% of commercial pilots. The figures are very similar in the USA and the rest of the developed world. Interestingly, this percentage has been approximately the same since around the 1950s. But why, in this day and age, are we so under-represented?

I recently asked this question to a 17 year old friend who was learning to fly. She shrugged. "It's a blokish thing to do", isn't it", she said. Perhaps that's it. Women don't meet other females who fly, so it simply doesn't occur to them. If they actually make it to a flying school, they are very likely to find it an extemely male-orientated environment. And if you start learning...well, I didn't meet another female pilot until well into my PPL course, and I was the only women on my Commercial Ground School course, out of about 30 people (there you go, 3%!).

Of course, women have been flying from the very start. The first woman in the UK got her Private Pilot's Licence in 1911. And of course in the 1930s there were famous aviatrixes like Amelia Earhart in the USA, Amy Johnson in the UK, and Hanna Reitsch in Germany. But somehow, flying never caught on to any great extent among the fairer sex.

So let's see if we can do something to redress the balance, now!