Women Executives in Aviation, Aerospace and Defense provides a snapshot of how women have risen through to the highest levels of management over the past few decades and, rightfully, it is cause of celebration. But that celebration is tempered by the continuing failure to celebrate all the historical role women have had in aviation, from the first woman to take to the air in the 18th Century, to the first woman to earn a pilots license to the first woman in space.
Disturbingly, as this compelling commentary suggests, America lagged behind its international competitiors in these achievements and continues to do so today. Goyer’s narrative in General Aviation News is a must read since, even those working hard to recognize women’s achievements missed this one. AvWeb Guest Blog: Reclaiming the Narrative To Change The Face Of Aviation.
While women are making career strides, we are not making as much progress as it seems judging from recent studies discussed below. To start the change, we must recognize how we’ve been written out of history, how bias continues to color our careers and we must know what needs to happen for women and other minorities to gain their rightful place in aviation, aerospace and defense.
Studies Show Us What Needs to Change
McKinsey & Co and Leanin.Org produced a recent study showing while women are advancing into the C-Suite, they are not in the operational roles that would lead them to become CEO. Women need to get into operational roles early in their careers.
“The biggest change has occurred at the top, where the population of women in the C-suite rose to 29% from 17% in 2015, while the share of women of color climbed to 7%,” wrote the Wall Street Journal in its coverage of the study. “Many of those senior women have been elevated in so-called staff roles, particularly chief HR officers, not as division heads with bottom-line responsibilities, the study data show. Those business-operating jobs, traditional steppingstones to becoming chief executive, continue to be filled mostly by men.
“The Lean In and McKinsey data show women tend to fall behind men in their career progress at the very first promotion opportunity,” WSJ continued. “About eight women get their first promotion to manager for every 10 men—virtually the same rate they did in 2018.”
A World Economic Forum report — The route to true gender equality? Fix the system, not the women — shows we need centuries to achieve gender equity. With interesting insights, it suggests a dramatic shift in strategy, focusing on income equality rather than wage equality. FA/AW News shares such articles in the belief we all need to have the same resources.
That is not to say progress is not being made. Female CEOs represent 19% of total Aerospace & Defense CEOs in the US, according to a study Soaring Through the Glass Ceiling: Taking the Global Aviation and Aerospace Industry to New Heights Through Diversity & Inclusion sponsored by the International Aviation Women’s Association and executed by Korn Ferry. This is well ahead of female CEOS across all industry at 5% but only 3% of airlines have women CEOs and, worse, the pipeline is thin, said the report.
In July 2023, MIT Management reported in — How to hire and support more women in your organization — for the first time in the history of the Fortune 500, women are leading 10% of the United States’ largest companies by revenue. While worth celebrating, it is still a small number.
The International Air Transport Association reported in mid 2023 reported it is behind on its goal, set in 2019, of achieving women holding 25% of airline senior leadership positions by 2025. It cited the fact that not enough of its airline members have pledged to improve gender diversity amongst executives although 191 members have — mostly airlines. However, it did name Yvonne Makolo, the CEO of RwandAir, to its first female chair.
28% of the senior leadership roles among participants in the 25by2025 initiative were held by women, up from 24% in 2021. The figures were derived from the 147 initiative participants that chose to submit data, including 129 airlines, so they could skew higher than overall industry numbers.
The organization also reported 28 airlines now have a female CEO, up 20% from 2021. Among the newer ones are Annette Mann, who became CEO of Austrian Airlines in March 2022; Marjan Rintel, who began as CEO of KLM last July; and Dorothea von Boxberg, appointed CEO of Brussels Airlines this spring. Vanessa Hudson will become the Qantas CEO in November.
But that pipeline might be skewed simply by the advantage held by male networks and hiring.
“The reason for their under-representation in the board room is not a lack of merit or talent, it is structural problems that disadvantage women in their careers, especially when they want to take on leadership roles,” Dutch MEP Lara Wolters said in a recent report on efforts by the EU to redress the imbalance. In November 2022, the EU adopted legislation to increase the number of women on the boards of big companies in the fight against gender discrimination with new rules aiming for at least 40% of non-executive director posts, or one-third of all director posts on publicly-listed firms filled by women by July 2026. EU Observer reported rules “require EU countries to impose ‘effective’ penalties for companies that do not reach the targets, including fines, or being publicly named and shamed.”
A recent study by LinkedIn, published in the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Gender Gap Report, showed that while women in leadership has been improving painfully slowly at about 1% a year for the past eight years in the broader economy, in the first quarter of 2023 the percentage of women in senior leadership dropped to only 32% reminiscent of 2020 pandemic levels. Globally, women comprise nearly half of all entry-level positions but only a quarter of C-Suite roles. Particularly in the STEM fields, a mere 12% of C-Suite positions are held by women.
Of equal concern is the number of African American or other minority women in the executive suites. In a new White Paper — Developing a Sense of Belonging for African American Women in the Workplace — from the University of Phoenix College of Doctoral Studies. The paper noted women, and African American women more acutely, are disproportionately underrepresented in senior-level leadership positions in United States corporations. While one in four C-Suite positions are filled by women, only one in 20 is a woman of color. African American women also encounter higher levels of biases in the workplace. The white paper discusses the current workplace challenges faced by African American women, defines inclusion and belonging, and examines what needs to occur for African American women to move into leadership roles within their respective organizations.
Aviation International News reported in June 2023 on the eve of International Women in Engineering Day June 23 women reached 20% and at places like Raytheon Technologies it is more with 32% of those in the executive ranks. The Boeing Company reports women accounted for 17.4% of the company’s engineering cohort, representing an increase since 2020 from 16.5%. Women’s representation in the overall Boeing workforce increased from 23.2% in 2020 to 24.1% in 2022. It’s 23% at BAE which set a target to increase that proportion to 30% by 2030. In its apprentice program, 30% of its apprentice intake were women.
Still, said AIN, just under one-fifth of engineering positions are typically filled by women at a time when the gender ratio for the overall workforce is generally closer to a quarter.
Raytheon participated in Discover Engineering‘s Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day as part of Engineers Week in February and partnered with Girls Who Code and Paradigm for Parity. Others are working with Girls, Inc. and Million Girls Moonshot and Code First Girls.
Women Make a Difference
A recent Harvard Business Review article explores why women make a difference when promoted to the C-Suite. Authors suggest similar results would come from studying other types of diversity. Many studies already show it is good for the bottom line.
CNBC recently reported the number of female CEOs in the Fortune 500 rose to a record high in 2022 — 44 — which still means that women run less than 10% of the largest corporations in the U.S. Despite making up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, women have yet to achieve true equity with their male colleagues in the C-Suite: Only 21% of C-Suite leaders at U.S. companies are women, according to a September 2021 report from LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Co. The CNBC report holds valuable advice for aspiring women leaders.
“Executives in the study were not household names allowing focus to shift from impressive achievements of individual female leaders in making it to the C-Suite to the broader impact of gender equity in the C-suite. After women joined the C-suite, firms became both more open to change and less risk-seeking. these organizations increasingly embraced transformation while seeking to reduce the risks associated with it. Firms shifted from a knowledge-buying strategy focused on M&As towards a knowledge-building strategy focused on internal R&D, The more effectively female executives were able to integrate into the managed team, the greater the impact they were likely to have on its decision-making.”
Flightglobal, in its 2023 survey, found while the number of women leading airlines advanced, “the progress was undermined by falls in female representation elsewhere in the C-suite,” said the publication. “For the second year running, the number of female chief executives across the top 100 airlines and groups doubled year on year. Overall, however, when five further C-suite roles are taken into account, women accounted for 15% of incumbents at end-2022 – a figure flat with end-2021. When the HR director role, or equivalent, is removed from the data, women accounted for just 10% of incumbents – a figure also flat with end-2021 but masking a small drop in the absolute number.”
“Among the key developments over the past 12 months, the number of female chief executives rose from six to 12 – the latter figure some four times higher than the three female airline leaders recorded in the first year of FlightGlobal’s survey, 2017,” the report continued. “Meanwhile, JetBlue Airways retained its position as the only carrier to employ a majority of women in the six surveyed roles, as North America continued to lead the way globally.”
FA/AW News has been looking for a comprehensive list of women aviation/aerospace executives. Failing that, it curated its own from research, including a recent Flightglobal report — Women have 14% of top airline jobs in slow trend towards parity and Women in Aviation & Aerospace Charter.
The list has four takeaways. While women are making progress we have a long way to go. Still, we must celebrate those who have shattered the glass ceiling by leading airlines, aerospace & defense companies, government, associations, airports, museums and business aviation.
It is also designed to illustrate if someone has a passion — interior design, finance, computer science, operations, personnel, catering, writing, sales, engineering, marketing, politics, government relations, data science, flying, maintenance, they can find a place in aviation & aerospace.
Third, it illustrates women’s entrepreneurial spirit. these are women who believed in themselves to carve out a unique space in aviation/aerospace.
Finally, the list On Their Shoulders at the end of this report illustrates women have always been in aviation/aerospace, they have just been overlooked.
FA/AW News hopes you will help update and correct this list by crowdsourcing your additions. We especially need help with the first women to fly commercial jets for airlines.
This article originally appeared in Future Aviation/Aerospace Workforce News.
