Women with Wings: Women Pilots of World War II

One of the many projects launched to herald Hull’s year as UK City of Culture was a celebration of its most famous daughter: the pioneering aviator Amy Johnson. But 76 years after her death – which was marked last year with a major festival – female pilots remain a rarity; worldwide just 3% of pilots are women, in the UK the figure is 6%. “The proportion is very slowly coming up but it is still miniscule,” says Marion Wooldridge, deputy chair of the British Women Pilots’ Association (BWPA).

The BWPA has 300 members and has been supporting female pilots for more than 60 years. It grew out of the Air Transport Auxiliary, the second world war pilots who were deemed unfit for combat but remained vital to the war effort in ferrying aircraft around the country. A considerable number of them were women, most notably Johnson, who died in 1941 while ferrying a plane. However, it is only recently that the association has started to work with schools and careers offices to help enthuse girls about Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) – and a potential career as a pilot.

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“Stem subjects aren’t essential to become a pilot but they are very useful, and one issue is the sense that these aren’t girls’ subjects. I’ve heard that girls are still being told it is not really something they do,” says Wooldridge, who believes a lack of female pilot role models is another major hurdle. “Once we saw the same with doctors and veterinary surgeons but now more women than men train in those professions.”

Good – and equal – pay, flexibility, variety, challenge and travel are just some of the benefits of the job cited by women pilots. Yet research by British Airways shows how few women consider a career as an airline pilot. In a poll of 2,000 women conducted by the airline in 2014, 63% said they were put off when they were growing up for reasons including a lack of visible role models and being told it was a man’s job.

These findings are borne out by the pilots we spoke to. Sabeena Yosuf, a captain for BMI, said her careers advisor told her to think about something else when she said she wanted to be a pilot. Easyjet captain Marnie Irwin-Munns had a similar experience at school.

More worrying is how pervasive the idea that girls can’t be pilots still is. “I went to give a talk at a school and the teacher said ‘oh the boys will love this.’ I said ‘the girls will too!’” said Irwin-Munns.

The cost of training may be another factor putting off women. “It costs about £100,000 to train and my feeling is that parents are more prepared to support male children rather than female children.