Random things that irritate me.

(there is some aviation content here, I promise)

I used to be quite an angry person. Although not so much anymore it would seem. I was an angry teenager (are there any other kind?), I did well enough in high school grade wise, but always skirted the borders of being in trouble with the powers that be due to my tendency to question everything. Looking back, my more shrewd teachers encouraged my rage-against-the-machine attitude in the hope that they could channel it into something more productive. The less savvy attempted to tame me and thus we clashed.

Nowadays there are less and less things that provoke such a ridiculously strong emotion in me like the ones I experienced in high school, I mean I still have a reputation at work as someone you don’t p!ss off  but no one feels like their life is in danger anymore. Recently though a couple of things have happened that have left me feeling generally very annoyed.

The one with a tenuous link to aviation was a TV commercial. Now TV annoying me is nothing unusual. I loathe scientifically inaccurate TV, be it film or documentary. Scientific ignorance is probably the one thing still guaranteed to get my blood boiling every time. We have a fantastic advert screening at the moment for a “chemical free” floor cleaner. Arghhh, my keyboard is suffering as I type this!

This advert though was for chocolate and a toy; yep the ubiquitous children’s treat “Kinder Surprise”. Only this is a special one, this is “Kinder Surprise for Girls” (bear with me there is flying stuff coming up)

Why oh why is there a special version for females? It comes with pretty pink flowers and dress up stuff. Beautiful reinforcement of gender stereotypes. I don’t have a problem with girls doing dress up and stuff but why are we promoting the idea that this is all they should aspire to? Put on some pretty lipstick dear and that’s all you’ll need in life.

It got my thinking about a conversation I had with a friend recently, neither of us would describe ourselves as “feminists” but both of us are going through a stage in our lives where we are questioning certain things.

Now I’ve always been in a male dominated environment, my physics undergrad class was 100 students, 6 females. It has never bothered me in the slightest. Not a single person in my family ever directed my life based on my gender. I was always encouraged to do exactly what I wanted to. That’s not to say that I haven’t experienced prejudice in my life, but let’s face it; no one has the luxury of going through life unchallenged. But I’m still acutely aware that I am in a minority aviation wise. If I take my flying school as an example, there were approx. 30 of us in ground school, 3 females. I know of exactly one female flight instructor. None of the dispatch staff are women and I haven’t come across any women down there working towards their CPL. I cannot help but ask why.

I actually don’t know who to be mad at. Statistically 50% of the people I encounter at the flight school should be female. Why aren’t they? I have a hard time believing that anyone of my generation has encountered sufficient prejudice to put them off. I’m pretty certain that in a progressive country like Canada (or the UK) that kind of chauvinism  doesn’t exist anymore. I honestly thought we were beyond that. Or maybe I’m just blissfully oblivious to it (it has been known!).

So honestly, who should I be more mad at, men for their alleged bigotry or women for not taking advantage of the opportunities that they now have access to (opportunities that their ancestors would have killed for)?

I’ve been harbouring these thoughts for a while. I think what brought it to a head was the fact that last week was “Women in Aviation Week.”* Normally I despise such things. I mean can you imagine the feminist uproar if there was a “Men in Aviation Week”? In my mind I’d like to think that there is no reason for such things, why would you draw attention to a gender divide that simply has no reason to exist? And yet exist it does, I’m planning to attend some extra ground school lessons soon. I can pretty much guarantee you that no more than 10% of us will be female.

I don’t like not understanding things. I simply can’t tell you why woman are in a minority when it comes to aviation. I can’t even tell you why it bothers me that they are. Why should I care? It is not like anyone ever stopped me from doing the stuff I wanted. Bob has never turned around and said " I'm sorry I can't teach you this because you're a girl."**

Maybe I should just leave the pretty girls to their eyeshadow while I fly my plane. 

Maybe I should just give up caring.

Or maybe I should just lay off the wine on a Sunday night!

* Incidentally this is how Oshawa airport got its “female friendly” designation. Airports could sign up for a competition and register how many “intro flights” they offered to women. Obviously they won that year. I wonder how much of an impact stunts like that actually make.


** For the record, not a smart thing to say to me. In case you were wondering!!