Planes, pilots & dinosaurs

The Laura Haynor/Gene Dornink story has really made me ranty this week. If you didn’t hear about it, let me fill you in. In a hearing in Minneapolis, Laura Haynor introduced herself as there to testify as a pilot on behalf of the Air Line Pilots Association International. Despite this clear introduction, Senator Gene Dornink then asked her what a typical workweek was like for her as a stewardess. In response to which Haynor repeated that she was, yes, a pilot.

Where do I start? Clearly the Senator wasn’t listening to Haynor when she introduced herself - which shows a lack of respect for women and what they have to say that is beyond common from men like this. But then if we imagine for a moment that this man had not listened attentively to a man introduce himself in this context, do we think he would have assumed the man in front of him was a steward? Of course he wouldn’t, he would have assumed he was a pilot, even if he was the airline refuse collector (meant with no disrespect to that, or any, job).

We have so many obstacles in the path to gender equality it’s depressing. How many must Laura Haynor have overcome to become one of the 5% of pilots who are women? And having overcome them she faces the bias of a world where we are programmed from birth to respect a man and assume big, important things of him - and to not listen to or respect a woman. Even when she is sitting in front of us telling us she does a job most of us (all genders) could only dream of qualifying to do.

As always, though, it’s not entirely a bad thing to get a sighting of a dinosaur like this. Surely every man on the planet is cringing in response and frantically checking himself to avoid doing anything similar and totally embarrassing himself. If this makes men do better on the respect, listening & sexist bias front then it’s not such a bad thing at all.