How Pink Paper Plane Will Fly

How Pink Paper Plane Will Fly
There is a ritual of flying- that the moment you get yourself buckled into seat,
the loudspeaker gets into life with a familiar dialogue, “Hello, this is your
captain speaking. Welcome aboard.” Now the question is, how many times of
your travelling experience has that voice belong to a female? For most fliers,
the answer would be either never or a very few times.
There are many females working in the Aviation courses industry across the
globe yet males still dominate when it comes to set carrier as a pilot.
There are approx. 4000 female pilots working worldwide which is not even 5%
of total strength of pilots. According to a study by the international Society of
Women Commercial Pilot Training, India estimated to have 11% female pilots
compared to the world average of 5% which seems better. However the
question remains the same. Why that is happening even after 80 years of
Helen Richey became the first female pilot of commercial airline? Answer to
this question could be involvement of money, training, awareness about career
option, job realities and so on. Let’s discuss it a bit more.
When someone decides to pursue flying as a career, the first thing which
matters a lot here is money. When going through the civilian route, it can cost
approx. INR 4000000 in training to become a pilot. In India we have a
tradition of not spending much money on girl’s education rather saving it for
her marriage. Discrimination against girls are from ages. It’s not like only our
country is facing this sociological problem rather this gender based
discrimination is pervasive across the world. So I guess this is the strong
reason behind less numbers of female pilots.
Now if I research that money is the only reason behind less number of women
in the cockpit then I find probably not. Thought this is one of the major

easons however I find dearth of awareness plays an important role here.
Whenever a girl thinks about making career in aviation she will opt for either
Air hostess or ground staff service. In my career as a business developer with
Ahmedabad Aviation & Aeronautics Ltd., I have experienced about only 10%
of the trainee or become a commercial pilots in a batch are women. And I find
most of them have something in common: a family member or friend who flew
and showed her it was possible at early age. When I discussed it with many
instructors they said that female pilots are excellent. There is nothing like a
particular skill or knowledge that guys are better at. Here I guess a lot of
women just don’t think about it as a career field.
Though the number is constantly changing and thankfully growing in our
country and figures suggest that India seems to be one place where women
are indeed working hard towards making that dream of pink paper plane
flying come true. Nevertheless the long working hours, stress and the
pressure to deliver safely at all cost, it's not a job that they would want
exchanged for any other. But all that changes the moment they realize they
are pregnant. They have no choice but go grounded or take long without pay
leaves of 18 months throughout the maternity period which is actually very
sad.
Very few women even view it as a job option at the first place because it is not
all about flying only, it is wrapped up in a whole lot of other unappealing
circumstances, unappealing especially to women who may not have the drive,
ambition, financial means or the network support to pursue flying as a career.