It goes both ways. There are well qualified women who will always get discounted when people assume they got the job because they were female.

Au contraire.

I can take the rest of your day and all of tomorrow accounting in great detail personal experiences of women (and minorities) hired because they were women and minorities, when they were not the best candidate by any metric, when those hirings displaced others who were more qualified.

I wonder if any man was ever hired when he wasn’t the “most qualified.” I was hired with almost zero TPIC and way before longtime LCAs, reps, special projects people, MBAs, veterans, and compelling personalities that I worked with while building time. Was it my gender that got me the job? Or do you just not take offense to that because I lack anything that identifies me physically as having “displaced” my betters?

Why does United have a higher percentage?

Because you’ve been complaining about guys relying on anecdote rather than statistics when it came to preferential hiring.

So you decided to reply to my request for facts with ... anecdotes.

I said nothing of taking offense.

I can tell you that when applying for a particular government assignment, I didn't ask for preferential points under any category. When I followed up on the application, I was asked if I wanted to update my application to show anything that qualified with "preference points." No, I didn't. Was I gay? Female? Ethnic? Veteran? Handicapped? I said I declined to cite for preference points. Thanks for applying, but without those points, not a chance. I was by far the most qualified applicant they had, far and away. I was told "If you were a handicapped lesbian veteran, we'd have a look."

Like I said, we can go on all day long with personal experience upon personal experience and observation, over many, many years.

We are talking about pilot hiring, not government service.

In the interest of not having the banal discussion of whether sexual harassment is real or not, I will retract everything I said about the bull**** women endure in aviation. They don’t by any available statistics. They also get no notable advantage that isn’t extremely confined to within the data noise.

I feel like if the HR manager told you that regarding being a "handicapped lesbian veteran" (something I highly doubt anyone would ever tell you), then maybe you weren't as qualified as you thought you were.

It was a pilot position, and it applies throughout the industry; airline, cargo, charter, government, utility, whatever. Done them all, ad infinitum, interviewed in them all, and I've seen prejudicial hiring in favor of minorities and women in all...for decades. How about you?

What you believe or doubt is irrelevant. It was a firefighting position. In that case, I can absolutely guarantee I was the only applicant in the country with heavy tanker, single engine tanker, air attack, fire patrol, and ground fire experience with current time in the aircraft and recent FSI and Simuflite experience and pro card. Far and away more experienced than the woman they ended up hiring, who had a couple of seasons as a tanker copilot under her belt. Why did she get hired? Thanks to a recent sexual harassment suit based on another woman who felt she was passed over, that particular location had a strong motive to put a woman in the position. As it turned out, she didn't stay in the position for very long. While I was happy for her and hoped she did well, it was significant for me at the time because I'd hit the age limit and it was my last chance, which is why I remember the particulars.

And absolutely yes, I was told that while I'd have been a shoe-in as a handicapped lesbian veteran with ethnic preference, I was told that they appreciated the application as it made their pick look better, and I was told that without the preference points, zero chance. It wasn't my first time around the block; I spent a big chunk of my life in that line of work. Accordingly, I don't really care what you feel like. You weren't there.

There's always been discrimination, Ive noticed people respond to it with a conventional wisdom. It feels perfectly right, when a mil guy or the chief pilots son slides into a legacy with relatively low time. A no name minority getting the same treatment makes peoples blood boil. Lots of big egos in this biz.