Fifty-fifty

We need to address the grass roots to get more women onto the flightdeck

There has been a growing movement, discussing the imbalance of women in aviation. Personally, I am an advocate for seeing such an imbalance addressed as some of the women that have flown the banner to date have done Australian aviation proud. What I find interesting is the promotion of targets of 50 per cent female intakes by some predetermined date.

At what point did the powers-that-be wake up and decide that recruiting women is suddenly an agenda item? Australian women have been doing us proud long before the advent of KPIs and marketing think tanks. We are familiar with the wonderful exploits on Nancy Bird-Walton as a pioneer aviatrix, but let’s not forget the amazing Lores Bonney either. World War Two saw women ferry everything that the military had to offer, all around the world. But then things seemed to stall a little.