*puts on sociologist hat* Well, yeah, it is a male dominated environment, nothing new there. The reasons why females are not as interested in pursuing vocations such as this may offend or baffle the girls scouts, feminists, equal opportunity groups et al, but it is rather simple:
These vocations do not fall inside the traditional female gender role. Since women have largely gained access to labor market participation in full by now, the lack of female participation in professional aviation (and recreational aviation by pure proxy) has nothing to do with being held down by the man, and everything to do with making the conscious choice to forego vocations that get in the way of the
desirable surburban mommy gender role.Engineering is another case study in which these dynamics are present, only less so in that the engineers' work schedule is more sedentary and allows a more feasible opportunity to fulfill this female archetype.
My point of observation? Female military pilots. Every year I hear of peers completely separating or otherwise hanging up the flight suit cold turkey mid career (they're all married to other military pilots too, this is not an immaterial distinction btw) to pursue motherhood. I always take a step back and recognize I'd never in a million years decide to just hang it up cold turkey, after all the hard work and sacrifice, yet these women do so at what seems to me the flip of a switch. They're as good as pilots as the men are, but they are adamant about making baby their priority as they enter their 30s. In that respect they still compare themselves to the nursing student they had for a girlfriend in college. And they want what she wants. And they envy her. And it shows.
The reason is simple. Child bearing and the homesteading that is required to be an involved traditional maternal figure is valued more in open society than having a 'neato' job that keeps you from living that archetype. Those women who are above-and-beyond aviation nuts usually end up not having children anyways and revert to more of a "part of the boys" crowd, which is great, but it doesn't fall in tune with the female line of thinking that being a desirable well-to-do suburbanite soccer mother of two with a professional white collar husband, that other women envy specifically, is the end goal. Again, I've seen this dynamic play out both in aviation and engineering. Female engineers and pilots alike recognize their lower desirability to the men their female peers (the teachers, nurses, cosmetologists, physicians, hell even military cookie cutter sunday dress wearing SAHWs) consider the target men. We are after all a gregarious species, so to the median, valuations of the pack actually carry weight. Amelia Earhart was never the archetype from which the median woman sought her self-actualization from, it has always been much much much more domesticated of an archetype.
Not saying this applies to the thread but when people talk about low female participation in aviation, based on my experience with female military pilots, I usually retort in my mind with "why fret over fixing something that isn't broken in he first place". The same thought I had when I was in engineering school and administrations and the girls scouts were scratching their nugget as to why women weren't sticking to math and science, in spite of competitive academic achievement measures that would opt them to be
just as successful (bolded for emphasis for the feminists in the crowd) in the field. Ah the irony of feminism. You gave them the keys to the male front office just to find out all they wanted to ever do was be well-to-do and have her girlfriends envy the man that pays for the "privilege" of your company. Ain't irony great..
Please don't take this as a push for encouraging lack of access in the workplace. I'm all about women doing whatever they want to do; many of these female pilots were and are great sticks, my PPL flight instructor was a woman, all is good and great. Im just highlighting what should be obvious to everybody except Oprah watchers, that is, that you can't have it all in life, and the labor market makeup shows that women are indeed voting with their feet, to the great distaste of feminist. If you are a woman in these male dominated environments and you feel socially marginalized, don't go screaming at men, go talk to the female peers that make you the odd duck. Again, there's nothing wrong with being a female "insert here whatever you want to be". But there are opportunity costs in life, just as there are for men,which need to be acknowledged. To each their own.
Just some social commentary to spice up the fretting over useless trivia and statistical methods *yawn*
