Walking a Tightrope: A Double-Standard for Women and BIPOC Pilots

Bias against nontraditional pilots in positions of authority

You didn’t study and train and practice and build hours just to play second fiddle; being pilot-in-command is the goal of every professional pilot. And now that you’re ready to be captain, you come up against society’s attitudes and individuals' biases about women, Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and non-gender-conforming folks in positions of authority.

Even though the Federal Aviation Regulations and the airline’s military-inspired rank system both reinforce that the captain is the pilot-in-command and ultimate authority over the flight, and even though the first woman airline pilot to become captain in the United States did so all the way back in 1976, people still have a problem with non-male, non-pale pilots as airline captains. 

The Double-Standard

This double-standard may appear at any point in a pilot career, and becomes more obvious during captain upgrade training, where it’s caused women and BIPOC pilots get washed out, or nearly so. My friends and I have experienced this at different airlines — I’ve trained as captain at three airlines, myself — and have been given debriefings that would never have been given to white male pilots. These weren’t critiques of aviation knowledge, ability to perform required maneuvers, or management of crew or emergency situations, which would be legitimate. Rather, evaluators point to intangible qualities that throw into question our suitability for the role:

“You fly well, but just don’t seem to be ready.”

“You’re too nice.”

“You need to take command.”

Or, bias is revealed when the critique is about the tiniest, nitpicky-est little things. A check pilot told a friend on her captain operating experience flight that she didn’t chime the flight attendants correctly to indicate Sterile Cockpit. At the end of the flight, he made her sit and flip that seatbelt sign switch on and off several times to prove she could do it “the right way”.

Really? REALLY?!

It’s almost as if some people in positions of power want to hobble and wash out pilots who are women, BIPOC, or seemingly “different”, and will find the flimsiest excuse to put a negative critique or failure in their training records. This is illegal under U.S. law — learn what you can do about it with the Halt Harassment in Aviation Checklist.

Why is this happening?

Societal Issues

First, it’s because women, Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and non-gender-conforming folks were historically excluded from pilot professions, and remain tiny minorities, and because of how they are treated in our society at large.

Our society has acculturated girls since birth to defer to men, be subordinate to men, be nice to men. Women are indoctrinated to not showboat, not flex their muscles, not make displays of power – not even when they hold actual power and authority. Likewise for people of underrepresented races and ethnicities vis-a-vis people of the majority race. 

Meanwhile, a woman in a position of authority may be labeled a ball-buster, battle-axe, bossy b!tch, man-eater, lesbian — intended as an insult in this context — and the list goes on. She is admonished that her demeanor is too direct, abrasive, aggressive. People of color holding power may be labeled with racist tropes like uppity and angry. LGBTQ folks are told to "tone it down".

On the other hand, when the same people display leadership traits that could be called cooperative, accommodating, flexible, agreeable, and friendly, they are denigrated as overly feminine – intended as an insult – and weak, incompetent, untrustworthy, unworthy of respect. 

It’s like having to walk a tightrope.

Another way the double-standard manifests is how a woman or person of color learning to fly can be viewed as “adorable”, with people falling all over themselves to tutor and mentor them, but when the same person dares progress to become a professional pilot or upgrade from co-pilot to captain, suddenly the attitude shifts to "who do you think you are?" and “you’re too big for your britches”  and “you don’t know your place”, which can lead to behavior intended to "put you in your place".

"Imposter Syndrome" — or Ambition Penalty

Women and other underrepresented people are persistently targeted with subtle and overt messages that they aren’t competent leaders and don’t belong in these lofty positions. The result and perhaps the intent is to undermine their confidence, and some do end up doubting themselves. This crisis of confidence is often labeled "imposter syndrome". It's reflexive for especially for women internalize and to take on a burden as an individual pathology, rather than name the source of the problem: systemic injustice and bias.

"Imposter syndrome directs our view towards fixing women at work instead of fixing the places where women work," say the authors of “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome” in the Harvard Business Review. “We often falsely equate confidence — most often, the type demonstrated by white male leaders — with competence and leadership. Employees who can’t (or won’t) conform to male-biased social styles are told they have imposter syndrome.”

This has also been called a “confidence gap”, in which girls and women become afraid to speak up, negotiate, assert themselves. Let’s call it what it really is: An ambition penalty. Because women are penalized for being assertive and taking charge and daring to have the ambition to learn to fly and to rise to the top of their profession.

A Good First Officer can make for a Bad Captain

The second reason women and BIPOC pilots may be penalized during captain upgrade training is because they have been good first officers — too good. 

First officers and co-pilots are expected to defer to the authority of the captain, let the captain make final decisions, and even to allow the captain to override their decisions and choices on most issues. Some FOs eventually seem to give up and just go along for the ride — not a great starting point for becoming the manager, leader, and final decision-maker on the flight deck.

The longer a pilot is a first officer, co-pilot, or relief pilot, the more accustomed they can become to not being in charge, and being chameleons: Flexible, accommodating, deferential, adjusting to the temper and tenor of each captain with whom they fly. Women are especially adept at this learned behavior, after a lifetime of programming.

But this doesn’t happen only to women and BIPOC. At a small start-up airline, I was hired as an off-the-street captain due to my prior airline experience, while it was the first airline pilot job for all of the first officers. When the time came for one of the white male first officers to upgrade, some of the captains didn’t think he was ready. He came to me, perplexed: “But I led an entire squadron in the Air Force!”

The issue was, he was overly deferential. He had stifled his command presence, which first helped him in the airline first officer role, but later impeded his promotion to airline captain. (He did become a captain, and did just fine.)

Read and take heed: If you’re overly accommodating, eager to please, and need to be liked, that does not help you to move into the left seat of pilot-in-command.

Be Nice — But Not Too Nice!

Did you know? The traits of likability and being "nice" are inversely correlated to being perceived as competent. 

During my latest captain upgrade training, in a simulator debriefing before the final checkride, the check pilot told me I needed to “be tougher” and “you have to bare your fangs.” It seemed that my being courteous and patient with my training partner, a new-hire first officer, might disqualify me as captain material. 

Message received. On our checkride, I made sure to bark out orders to the first officer. And we passed. 

Apparently that’s what they want to see. You won’t be allowed to upgrade to pilot-in-command until you can act like their version of a commander, which is equated with being domineering and acting like a complete bully or b!tch. Just as women airline pilots are expected to don a traditional men’s business suit and necktie as their ill-fitting uniform, they’re also expected to adopt the traditional toxic traits of male leadership, to which they are not accustomed, in order to be captains.

And expect to be punished if you can’t or won’t do it. Punished for not conforming to traditional female gender roles by being an airline pilot in the first place, and then punished for not closely adhering to the traditional male gender role of a commanding captain, from the viewpoint of a biased gatekeeper. Show your mettle, take charge, and prove you can be in command. Yet, be nice. But not toooo nice!

As the authors of a study on prejudice towards women leaders put it: “Women leaders’ choices are thus constrained by threats from two directions: Conforming to their gender role would produce a failure to meet the requirements of their leader role, and conforming to their leader role would produce a failure to meet the requirements of their gender role.”

Like walking a tightrope.

Setting Expectations and Boundaries as Captain

The good news is, acting “bossy” is mostly a temporary necessity during training. Once you’ve earned your captain wings and are on the line, you can return to being your regular friendly, courteous, quietly confident self on the flight deck. You can be more team-oriented, collaborative, and approachable — another style of leadership that can exist within a hierarchy, one that doesn’t rely on pulling rank at every moment.

Most of the time.

No matter your crew position, you deserve to be treated with common courtesy. It's up to you to set this as an expectation and reinforce it as a boundary. And when you're the captain, you must address crewmember misconduct head-on. Ignoring a problem only delays the inevitable, and can make the problem worse.

There will be times when a first officer, flight attendant, or other coworker will try to challenge and usurp your captain authority, and sometimes it’s because they believe that someone they consider to be inferior doesn’t belong in the captain seat. For example, at that small start-up airline, a few of the male first officers tried to challenge decisions that did not fall into gray areas (e.g. FARs, SOPs), persisting despite my careful explanations, ignoring how they were brand-new to airline flight operations in contrast to my far greater pilot-in-command and airline experience. Discussing this among other captains, we discovered that only the company’s sole female captain (me) was being challenged in this way. 

As more women and underrepresented pilots upgrade to airline captain and pilot-in-command, they report that some white and male new-hire first officers struggle being subordinate to them. These first officers give flight instruction (telling captains how to fly, when the captains have thousands of hours more flight experience), interfere with or attempt to oversee captain duties (when the captain already knows their job, and the first officer is neglecting his), and mansplain aircraft systems and procedures to women (an affront when directed at a woman captain by a man new-hire first officer who is both new to the company and new to the aircraft). And sometimes it's flight attendants or other coworkers who show disrespect.

Such misconduct can arise from bias and prejudice, lack of trust, or from cluelessness, rudeness, fragile ego, or some other personal issue. Or, it can be a case of a lack of exposure. One persistent mansplainer finally admitted that he'd never flown with a woman pilot before. Guess what? It isn't our job to teach you how to play nice with fellow human beings who happen to be a different gender or race than you. We're all pilots. Just start from there.   

Regardless of the source or motivation for a crewmember's inappropriate behavior, the captain must prevent it from disrupting crew resource management, before it impinges on safety of flight, and hopefully before it reaches the point of outright insubordination.

An observation: Since women and BIPOC people have been blocked from positions of power and authority for so long, now that they hold actual power and authority intrinsic to the role of captain and pilot-in-command, some are reluctant to wield it.

But wield it we must.

Suggested Techniques

Blatant misconduct must be shut down. Do not "hint and hope". Speak directly to the issue and be firm about your expectations going forward. Here are some suggested techniques:

SAY LESS: Just give them a look. You don't have to say anything. You don't have submit to a grilling on aircraft systems. You don't have to prove what you know or show what you can do or do anything at all to prove that you deserve to be captain. You. Are. The. Captain. As one captain put it: "Never have an argument you've already won."

SAY NO: Learning to say "No" is a big part of being pilot-in-command. Remember that "No" is a complete sentence. Or you can add, "We'll discuss it in the post-flight debriefing."

BE DIRECT and SUCCINCT: "Your chatter is distracting. Please review systems and procedures quietly in your head, since I already know them." Or, “No more sex, politics, race, or religion. Let’s stay BORING: Basic Operating Requirements In Normal Guidelines.”

USE HUMOR: "Yep! You got it! You're demonstrating good listening and comprehension skills!" Or, "Wow — you're putting what you learned in training together with what I just showed you and re-stating what I just said. Good job, buddy!"

NEXT PREFLIGHT BRIEFING: "I observed some things during our first day flying together yesterday, and now I'm going to help you out. You have a habit of mansplaining things to me that I already know. That could easily be seen as being condescending and patronizing to women pilots and especially to women captains. I'm hoping you were just trying to demonstrate your knowledge. But either way, I don't expect it to happen again while we fly together. Now let's look ahead to a great day of flying."

DRAW THE LINE: "You might not respect me, but you must respect the position of captain and be able to work with me, the captain. If you cannot, let me know now so that I can call for another first officer."

Here are more calm comebacks to rude remarks.

Good News

There’s more good news, though. The younger generations raised by parents who lived through or came after the Civil Rights, Women’s Liberation, and Gay Pride movements are bringing fresh attitudes towards a diversity of people in aviation. Young women have had the opportunity to develop leadership skills early, as “jocks” and captains of their high school soccer teams and college flight proficiency teams. As a result, we’re seeing an acceleration in the pace of women, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC learning to fly, pursuing pilot careers, and upgrading to captain. One can only hope that as this generational shift progresses, especially into the captain and check pilot ranks, harsh and toxic management styles will become outmoded.

In my 28+ years as a member of the International Society of Women Airline Pilots, dozens and dozens of friends have advanced from first officer to captain, and it’s been fascinating to observe them growing into the command role. As captains, they hold themselves with more pride, stand up straighter, shoulders squared. They display more self-assurance in how they walk and talk and look you in the eye and express their views. They no longer shrink in an attempt to placate others, no longer silence themselves, no longer hide their personal power. They own it!

As it should be. Because we earned those captain wings, and keep earning them on every flight.

My hat is off to Captain Jean Haley Harper and Captain Theresa Claiborne, who literally led the way. My sincere gratitude to them and the other captains who have shown what true leadership is and shared some of the techniques included here.

© 2023 Jenny Beatty. All Rights Reserved.

Photo courtesy of Jenny Beatty