An Exploration on Pilots’ and Student Pilots’ Perspectives towards the Gender Bias in Thai Aviation Industry

Chanikarn Thatchatham,Waralee Peetawan

doi:10.3390/proceedings2019039024

Abstract

Since the aviation industry is acknowledged as the male-dominated filed, the existence of female pilots in the cockpit has long been controversial over decades. However, it is revealed by many aviation organizations that the number of women pilots has been growing constantly recently. Several studies have been conducted to explore female pilots’ perspective towards the existing gender bias in the aviation field in the global scale. Meanwhile in Thailand, there is the scarcity of studies on the similar topic, especially perspectives towards the factors and motivations driving female pilot to enter the aviation industry in Thailand. This study purposes to investigate the perspectives of female student pilots, a female pilot and a male pilot towards the negative gender stereotypes in the pilot profession in Thai context. A mixed-method questionnaire was conducted to collect data by having two main approaches: a Likert-scale and close-ended questionnaire and the semi-structured interview from eight participants including six female student pilots (FSP), one female professional pilot (FP) and one male professional pilot (MP). The results yielded from all female participants revealed that gender prejudice still exists in the industry, which resulted in female pilots having to prove themselves and their skills set to be accepted in both the training duration and working period. However, all participants all opine that the aviation industry has recently seen the lesser degree of sexual bias towards female pilots and the positive trend of more female pilots stepping into this male-dominated field.

Highlights

Women have entered the area of aviation for almost half a century, it cannot be denied that the notion of women working in the cockpit still sounds uncommon since the pilot job has traditionally been regarded as the ‘male-dominated’ profession
Half of female student pilots (FSP) subjects acknowledge no differences in the way they and their male counterparts obtained training, while the other half agreed that the differences in training still exist, from the slight to moderate degree
One FSP revealed that some male instructors implied the discomfort during training and tended not be as intimate with FSP as in male student pilots

Summary

Introduction

Women have entered the area of aviation for almost half a century, it cannot be denied that the notion of women working in the cockpit still sounds uncommon since the pilot job has traditionally been regarded as the ‘male-dominated’ profession. According to CAPA (2018), the female pilots share tiny percentages of 4.4% and 4.3% in US airlines and UK airlines respectively. The number of women pilots has been growing gradually, but by less than 1 part per thousand. The pilot job is considered to require masculine characteristics such as physical and mental strength, great leadership, advanced technical skills and high degree of responsibility for the flight safety. Being a woman was regarded as a disadvantage and might be underrepresented in the field.

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion