Which recommendations stood out most to you?
On the pilot side, the notion of work–life balance is incredibly important. While I’ve been at WAI, I’ve talked to a number of high school girls and early-college women. A lot of them ask questions starting with, “Can I …?” “Can I be a pilot?” “Can I fly and also have a family?” The hard part about those questions is
these women don’t have anybody in their daily lives they can ask aviation-career questions of or watch to see how it’s done. They don’t see a mother who’s a pilot. That’s a really big concern for them. They don’t want to have to choose between hav- ing a family and a flying career. They want to do both and want to know how to do it. On the WIAAB, we developed a lot of recommendations addressing those
concerns. How does the industry create a culture and policies that allow women to have both a family and a career in a way that doesn’t make them feel like they have to choose one or the other? The topics our recommendations addressed included health care, family- leave accommodations, and flexible sched- ules. None of these recommendations qualifies as outside-the-box thinking. It’s just that we haven’t really adopted them industrywide yet.
Some organizations are at the forefront of that movement, but across the board, [our industry makes] it very difficult for women to have both a family and a career. I always come back to the fact that men don’t ask whether they can do both. What are we doing that causes women to feel they can’t?
The other really big piece is getting
more young people involved in the indus- try. That requires a lot more promotion of aviation to the next generation. Rarely do teachers or counselors in
schools—elementary, middle, and second- ary—really understand that this is an indus- try that’s starved for talent. [Editor’s note: According to the WIABB report, Boeing forecasts that over the next 20 years, 612,000 new civilian pilots, 626,000 new maintenance technicians, and 886,000 new cabin crew members will be needed worldwide.] There’s a need for a huge influx of aero-
space workers over the next 20 years, and we have to start educating parents, coun- selors, teachers, and the kids themselves that regardless of what you want to do with your life, you can do it in the aviation
JUNE 2022 ROTOR 23
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