WOMEN AND AVIATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 96, 20 October 1937, Page 11

WOMEN AND AVIATION

AMY JOHNSON'S ADVICE

An epitaph to "all you stubborn, pigheaded, hard-hearted, mean, old business magnates who won't give jobs to us sweet, appealing, gracious, and oh-so-clever women" was quoted by Miss Amy. Johnson on September 27, states the "Daily Telegraph." She was presiding at the annual dinner'of the Women's Engineering Society in the Forum Club. Tlie epitaph is as follows:— Here lies the body of William Jay, . Who died maintaining his right of way, He was right, dead right, as he sped along, But he's just as dead as if he were wrong. Mis«'Johnson asked why there were not many .more-women employed in aviation. She believed that the fault lay as much with the women as with the employers, . who were often described, as hard hearted, prejudiced, and unjust. \ "To women who may sometimes feel that they are not being given their dues," she added, "I should like to ' say this: Men are naturally gallant, and want to give women a chance." "OUR WORST ENEMIES." ; "Try not to start off in a spirit of resentfulness and aggression. Sometimes we!are our own worst enemies. We argue and argue and try to convince that we are just as good as any man, and then are amazed when our belligerent tactics go unrewarded, andi we fail to get the job and complain bitterly of inequality and injustice. "Instead, we should first be sure of ourselves on the technical side of the job, and then should spend the rest of our energies putting ourselves over." Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Francis Shelmerdine, Director-General of Civil Aviation, said that he believed that there was a great future for women both on the piloting and engineering sides of aviation. He spoke of the great services Miss Johnson had rendered to the cause of aviation through, out the Empire. Experiments now being made "in a certain European country" with selflubricating metal were mentioned by Miss Dorothy Spicer, the woman aeroengineer, in a paper read to the annual conference of the society in Crosby Hall, Chelsea, earlier in the day. "I gather that this new metal is used for gun barrels," she said. "It is claimed that after the first bullet has been fired there is little visible change in the metal,-but after the firing of the second bullet one can actually see how th« metal has lubricated itself."