Thesis-2017-McCarthy.pdf (1.39 MB)
An exploration of the gender and professional identities of ab initio pilots
thesis
posted on 2018-05-31, 09:11 authored by Faye McCarthyDespite it being over a century since the first woman gained a pilot s licence,
piloting remains a male-dominated profession. Worldwide, only 3% of airline
pilots are women and, of these, only 450 hold the rank of Captain, a number
who could easily be seated within a single A380. UK airlines are recognising
that the low number and proportion of female pilots is an issue and some
carriers, including easyJet, have introduced initiatives to promote gender
diversity on the flightdeck. However, as there are few female pilots qualifying
and applying for airline jobs, there is a compelling need to both examine why
relatively few women consider a career as a pilot and then understand the
challenges those who do make a non-traditional career choice and enter the
profession face during their initial (ab initio) training in reconciling their
developing professional identity as a pilot with their gender identity as a
woman.
The aim of this thesis is to explore the effects of women ab initio pilots
minority status on their gender and professional identities. To address this
aim, the thesis utilises the Theory of Tokenism, together with concepts of
Gender Performativity and Professional Identity, to explore the experiences
of ab-initio pilots at two UK-based Flight Training Schools. New empirical
evidence, derived from in-depth interviews and surveys, found that female
cadets perceive elements of their professional identities differently from men,
and women cadets adopt a range of strategies to negotiate conflicts between
their developing professional and gender identities. The research examines
the experiences of these cadets to make both theoretical and empirical
contributions to existing studies of gender-dominated professions as well as
offering practical recommendations to airlines and flight training schools who
are seeking to encourage more women to qualify as commercial airline pilots.
History
School
- Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Publisher
© Faye McCarthyPublisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2017Notes
A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.Language
- en