Girls CAN Fly

Those of you who follow my blog know that in addition to being a certified teacher and mother of monozygotic twins, I am also a licensed pilot.

I’ve always said that I “just” have a PPL (private license, as opposed to a CPL, or commercial license, the latter being the first step towards career flying), and that while I do love it, it’s just a hobby for me, that my first love is teaching.

But after volunteering at the “Girls Can Fly” event in Waterloo this weekend, it got me thinking about how girls especially choose career paths, or perhaps more accurately, how they are steered down particular paths and away from others.

The event, like an increasing number of similarly targeted events held at various airports across the country in recent years, is designed to expose girls aged 8-18 to aviation-related careers, especially piloting.  Female and female-friendly volunteers from various airlines and other aviation organizations staff booths with information targeted at engaging girls in flying as a career.

For those lucky enough to register in advance for a limited number of free flights, 20 minutes behind the yoke of a Cessna or at the controls of a helicopter is also part of the day.

To those in the industry, it’s no secret that women form roughly 6% of the commercial airline pilot population; Porter airlines sits at a relatively impressive 12% currently, still abysmal, but twice the industry average, thanks to Bob Deluce’s vision of gender parity (and increasingly, systemic approaches to making it happen!)

Side view of a Dash 8 from Porter Airlines

With a massive shortage of pilots predicted for years already, engaging girls and young women is seen by many airlines as a critical opportunity to increase the pool and avoid a looming crisis.  If more girls choose flying as a career path, they feel, perhaps it may provide an eventual solution to an already-underway pilot shortage.

I will say that even as a grown woman, there is something tremendously exciting about watching a Dash8 land, the door open, and a large group of female pilots in full uniform alight.  Even as they hovered around their booth later on in the hangar, chatting with the various girls and families that visited the Porter booth, I felt positively giddy!

Is there anything cooler than a bunch of women pilots?

I reflected on my own fascination with the cockpit, which started as far back as I can remember, when the pilots on pre-9-11 flights would invite all the children up for a visit to the cockpit if they wanted to see… and, lucky me, on my way to Florida as a toddler and Europe later on with my mom or Omi, I got to go and visit the flight deck many times.  I was mesmerized!

But despite being raised by a strong and independent mother, I was still victim to the many subtle yet clear messages from the society in which I grew up.  Flying was for men: When boys visited the cockpit, they were often asked if they wanted to be a pilot one day, whereas my interest in aviation was never encouraged.  No, for me, a girl, it was clearly just a fun visit to the flight deck to alleviate the boredom of a transatlantic flight.  Furthermore, all the pilots I ever saw on those flights were tall, white and male -- and as a 10-year-old girl, I only fit one of those privileged categories.

Besides, teaching was my first love… or was it?

I had always wanted to be a teacher (and I think I was a mighty fine one for the many years I spent in the field before moving to the Ministry of Education to become a paper pusher).  But in retrospect, I can’t help but wonder how things might have played out if I had seen fewer female teachers in my 15 years of schooling and more female pilots. Would flying have stood more of a chance as a contender?

As with so many other things, the people around me just made the decisions about what -- as a girl -- I “should” like and be good at, and when I didn’t always fit the stereotype (I choose skateboarding over roller skating and drums over flute or clarinet), it was me that was the problem, not their gendered expectations.  

Or at least, that’s what it felt like.

From my spot behind the CAP booth, I watched as girls confidently engaged with the young women who were working in the field that they themselves dreamed of.  Excitedly, they chattered with “real pilots” who looked and sounded just like them.  The expressions on their faces said it all!

I love teaching, and I have no regrets about becoming a teacher.  But I love flying airplanes, too. And watching these girls just a generation and half younger than me, my mind pondered the possibilities: Had I had the chance to fly in a Cessna with a female pilot when I was 8, and had I been able to talk to a hangar-full of smiling, confident women pilots when I was 10, would my current “hobby” have started far sooner than age 40?  And maybe, just maybe, might it even have become my profession?

It’s at turns a troubling and a deliciously exciting mental exercise to imagine myself having chosen a different career path: Afterall, as it turns out, girls CAN fly!