Originally Posted by PotatoChip

I only very vaguely remember the PM exchange. I don’t recall saying “I’d be one of the first to get hired.” That’s incredibly presumptuous and arrogant, and frankly I don’t believe that’s my character. Perhaps I said I hoped I’d be one of the first. As it is, clearly that has not transpired. I still feel well-qualified, but not entitled, to interview, and several consultants have agreed. I’ll bide my time until then doing whatever I can to stack the deck in my favor. I’m certainly not “just waiting for the call” and then complaining I’m not getting it.

I hate to explain my previous post, because it’s not a cop out. I believe some people just want to believe what they believe and that’s that. However, I’ll make a feeble attempt at verbalizing something that I don’t have a first hand experience in...

I cannot ever understand what it’s like to be a female in the this industry. I will never understand how it feels to know that any cockpit you enter might aggravate the pilot you’re flying with simply because you’re a woman and now they’ll feel like that have to alter their behavior to not offend you. I’ll never know what it feels like to overhear “another empty kitchen” jokes, or field constant questions like “what does your husband think?” “Don’t you want kids?” “Are you going to quit for a family?”. I’ll never know what it feels like to have entire threads derail into “She was only hired because she was a woman” and then sit next to someone who believes exactly that. I can’t understand that and won’t pretend I do. If you don’t think that this is an immediate disadvantage, then I’m sorry. If you can’t have sympathy for those female pilots who just as hard as anyone else only for their peers to make jokes behind their backs or say they were only hired because of their anatomy, I’m sorry.

Does this fit every person? No. Do some people get hired due to some HR diversity matrix, undoubtedly.

Likewise, I won’t for a second pretend I know what it’s like to be black in America.

The truth as I see it is this, white males have an advantage simply because we are the majority. When you are in the majority you are not different. You have nothing to prove to anyone. There aren’t snide comments made about you by other pilots because of anything other than your crummy stick and rudder skills.

That’s the advantage. I’m not saying we don’t work as hard, or harder to get where we are. God knows I’ve done my time. But I’ve never sat in those other shoes.