Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences
School of Management Sciences
Department of Human Resources Management
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
How pink is the sky? The answer to this question is that it is still pretty blue! This cross-national research project of the gendered occupation of pilot was conducted by researchers at the Faculty’s Department of Human Resources in conjunction with colleagues from Australia, Norway and the United States of America (USA).
They found that the occupation of aviation pilot is considered by many as one of the last bastion of masculinity, even though female pilots have made significant contributions to aviation over the years.
More than 2 300 pilots from across Australia, Norway, South Africa and the USA took part in the survey. While drawing on the results from the quantitative analysis, the main focus of the study is on the results of the qualitative analysis. Gender Issues, Equity, Flying Proficiency, Safety Orientation and Industry were selected as themes.
Researchers found the following:
· Characteristics including caring, warmth and sexually attractive as well as passive, weak and dependent were generally ascribed to female femininity. While the comments were often positive towards female pilots, regular reference was made to the impact, real or imagined, of women’s biological functions of menstruation and childbearing on their performance. Australian respondents tended to comment less on these issues than the South Africans and Americans. Femininity was a non-issue among the predominantly male Norwegian pilots. Generally, comments on femininity did equate female hormonal changes with emotional swings resulting in potential safety problems and poor crew resource management;
· Australians were more concerned with masculinity issues than their South African, Norwegian and American counterparts. Older male airline pilots tended to emphasise male qualities in pilots as being the ideal. Although male pilots gave recognition to the capabilities of female pilots, they tended to prefer to fly with other males and their comments regularly belittled the different skill sets of female pilots;
· In terms of equity, South Africans - followed by American, Australians and Norwegians - commented most on the equality of female pilots. South African pilots view the recruitment of female pilots under Affirmative Action programs as an effort to fill quotas. This has led to expressions of resentment and an unfounded belief that female pilots who were hired were incompetent;
· Comments from respondents from all four countries in respect of flying proficiency indicated that gender is not necessarily an issue in determining the flying proficiency of pilots. Rather, it is the ability of the individual and their personality that is the determining factor of their proficiency;
· Safety Orientation relates to perceptions about the level of risk-taking amongst pilots of a particular gender. The comments were identified as falling into two sub-categories of Safety Standards and Safety Performance. Overall comments may indicate that, although not ‘taken-for-granted’, safety concerns and practices were an expected norm. Comments from Norway and Australia were considerably lower that those from South Africa and the USA;
· Comments about the industry varied between each country, but overall there were common concerns that aviation remained male dominated. There were also expressions across all countries that the industry welcomed female pilots, but indicated that it remained a tough industry for them;
· Equal employment opportunity (EEO) and affirmative action (AA) legislation has expanded the career opportunities for female pilots across the four countries. However, the impact of this social legislation was highlighted fairly equally by both positive and negative comments. Australian, South African and American comments indicated that careers for female pilots had been boosted and that was good. Norwegian response was relatively low and comments indicated that more female pilots would be good for the industry to create a better balance.
Prof Leo Vermeulen
Human Resources Management
+27 (0) 12 420 3074
leo.vermeulen@up.ac.za
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