Are they really under-represented though? I mean maybe they just don't want to be involved in it. We aren't complaining about a serious lack of women in the garage door installation industry or the plumbing industry or the garbage collection industry.
I see this argument a lot. It's been applied to all kinds of social-equality battles throughout history. Women have been observed to "not be interested due to their nature" in all kinds of things over the years, by those interested in preserving the status quo. Name pretty much any right that we've had to fight for, and this argument has been on the other side of it.
No, Ed, I'm not saying that the ratio must be 50-50 to claim success. I've been in this business a long time, and know better.
The sky is open to anyone who wants it.
Yes. The sky is.
So are flight schools, magazine subscriptions, airline job positions, fly-ins, and all the other things y'all use as exemplars of how everything's fine.
Aviation culture, however, is not.
Flying is of nature, but culture is a human construction, which has problems, and can change for the better.
Consider this board, for instance... I've seen threads here where a male flight instructor posted snarky remarks about his student's body after her first solo. I've seen threads where a guy ranted about how all women will do is get pregnant and take all your money. This is a place where a person can make dismissive comments about women and girls, ranging from merely insensitive to downright creepy, throw in an ambiguous "lol" or confusion-emoji to establish plausible jokiness deniability, and most people think it's perfectly OK. If you don't think that battle is worth fighting, then fine. Do some women stay anyway? Yes. But if women as a group don't want to be involved in a culture like that, "their nature" is not to blame.