WOMEN AS AVIATORS

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 16 November 1929, Page 11

WOMEN AS AVIATORS

ARB women being discriminated against in aviation ? Is society pushing men for- . ward and holding women back in the great modern conquest of the air? Miss Amelia Earhart, the first, Avoman to fly the Atlantic and prehaps best qualified to speak authoritatively on behalf of her sex, says emphatically that they are. Despite the fact that Avomen are rapidly overcoming the inbred timidities which civilisation has imposed upon them, despite their Avidespread interest in flying and the future it holds for them, they are still bound by the chains of artificial difference betAveen the sexes. She says:— “Women can qualify in the air as in any other sport. Their influence and approval are vital to the success of commercial aviatioh. Women and girls write to me by the thousands to learn the truth about aviation and Avhat women’s chances are. There is nothing in avoman’s make-up Avhich Avould make her inferior to a man as an air pilot. The only barrier to her SAA’ift success is her lack of opportunity to to receive proper training.

“Society has imposed unjust distinctions in the education of the sexes. Regardless of a woman’s natural inclinations and talents, she lias been assigned summarily to certain prescribed courses of study in public and private schools. SeAving and domestic science are made compulsory for schoolgirls Avhose propensities are Avholly in the direction of things mechanical. Women have an abysmal ignorance of mechanics and engineering, through no fault of their OAvn. “HoAvever, the importance Avhich mechanical labour-saving devices have assumed in the average Ameriacn home is beginning to open the eyes of even the most helplessly feminine avoman. S'lhe is beginning to realise that to keep in tune Avith the march of modern progress she must have some veiy definite mechanical knoAvledge. “She realises that it is important to her comfort, her efficiency as a Avorker and a buyer that she learn Avhat makes the Avheels go round. It is my firm belief that Avoman’s interest in aviation—backed up by the strong opinions of an air-minded generation of schoolgirls—will bring this question of unfair and unjust discrimination between the sexes as regards education AA r ith reference to A’ocationai aptitude directly into the open and definitely burn away fallacious barriers. “Commercial aviation is a bustling industry, but at present it is making little or no effort to enable Avomen to secure the training and experience required of an industrial pilot on one of the regular airAvays,” she said. “Sooner or later the big air lines must enlist Avomen’s intelligent co-operation, because Avithout them aviation cannot hope for success. One has only to study the history of the automobile industry to recognise the truth of Avhat I am saying.

“Twenty years ago the idea that. Avoman could learn to drive automobiles Avas considered preposterous. The eternal bogies, feminine nerves and physical Aveakness, were advanced as final and conclusive arguments Avhen all others failed. And strangely enough, to-day, in the face of superlative proof to the contrary,

GIVE THEM A CHANCE

VIEWS OF AMELIA EARHART

one sees these same threadbare, bromidie arguments solemnly dusted off and brought forth again to be used against. Avomen aviators. “I doubt if men will ever believe that there is no such thing as feminine nervus as opposed to nerves of the masculine variety. Yet, if anything, virtually all of woman’s experience and training have been of the sort to give her nerves of iron. No man could endure for a half hour Avhat is just part of a day’s Avork to a woman —cooking a dinner Avith one hand, rocking a cradle with the other, at the same time keeping a Avatchful eye on sonny and sister, Avho are probably very much underfoot. Certainly the performance of young business Avomen in our great cities is a daily tribute to their ability to thrive under 'the tension of noise, big business and high-pressure Avork.” Born in Atchison, Kansas, Amelia Earhart lived there until she reached high school age. When the United States entered the World W*p she Avas at Ogontz School, ill the suburbs of Philadelphia. Her sympathies Avere aroused by seeing four soldiers on crutches Avhile she Avas visiting her sister in Toronto. She dropped school and started training under the Canadian Red Cross. Her first assignment Avas at Spadina Military Hospital. At the end of her hospital career Miss Earhart joined her father and mother in Los Angeles. It Avas in California that she first became actively interested in aviation. In 1920 she established the Avoman’s record for altitude. She holds the first international pilot’s licence issued to a Avoman. After some time in California, Miss Earhart decided to return to the East. She sold her ’plane for a car. After a summer at Harvard she joined her sister in teaching and doing settlement work in Boston. Her interest Avas soon reaAvakened in aviation and she became a member of the Boston chapter of the National Aeronautical Association and Avas ultimately made vice-president. After her return from the trans-Atlantic trip she Avas made president —the first Avoman president of a body of the N.A.A. Until her epoch-making flight, Miss Earhart continued as a worker at Dennison House, Boston’s second oldest settlement. At present Miss Earhart lives in New York. That is, Avhen she is not flying about the country as assistant to the general traffic manager of Transcontinental Air Transport, with Avhich organisation Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh is also associated. She is also a\ r iat.ion editor of a monthly magazine.

It is characteristic of her that in. her book, “20 Hrs. 40 Min,” which tells the intimate story of her flight across the Atlantic in the Friendship, that she should say time and time again throughout the narrative that the entire credit of the magnificent, exploit should go to Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon, the men Avho piloted her. Not long ago Miss Earhart explored the bottom of the ocean off Block Island as a deep-sea diver. The first time she Avent doAvn her diving suit leaked, but, nothing daunted, she made another try the next day. When she came up, after being doAvn more than 20 minutes, she said: It is nothing at all. Plenty of Avomen have been deeper and stayed longer.”