The literal chemical makeup of a woman's brain leads her to be more empathetic and more nurturing. There are countless peer reviewed studies about this. It's evolutionary.

Science has proven my point time and time again. As the guy above me stated, women and men are wired differently. It’s been that way since life began, and it will be that way until the end of days. Women are wired to be more of a nurturer by nature. Therefore, it makes sense that the vast majority of them will also take jobs that suit those ideals: nurses, teachers, etc.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, until the "goal" becomes a "quota" and John Q Qualified Pilot is overlooked for Adrianna Q Pilot with multiple checkride or training failures - for the sake of checking a box.

It's already happening in the rest of Corporate America. It doesn't work in Aviation. Outreach is absolutely not an issue. Selective hiring based on race/gender is.

But not 10x more, no. The discrepancy in aviation isn't a small gradient, it's huge! If you want to defend a 60/40 ratio, we can have a discussion about brain chem. But 95/5? Riddle me that.

That's the irony. The woke "we love science!" crowd hates biology, neuroscience, psychology, endocrinology.....

Women have to make huge sacrifices to become pilots, and the ones I know who chose to pursue this career vs. raising kids are excellent pilots. But they are also often unmarried and have no children. And they're OK with that. More power to 'em.

The biggest irony is that the feminist crowd is now more concerned about advocating for biological men than biological women. But that's a whole other topic.

We’ve been promoting things like that for decades now. This isn’t that. This is putting up a barrier to entry into the training program to applicants who don’t meet HR’s preferred skin color/genital makeup. And it may be a hard concept to grasp for many of the social justice warriors out there, but there is a HUGE difference between qualified (e.g. meeting the minimum requirements) and being the most-qualified. In order to meet the numbers they’re proposing, there will have to be sacrifices made in that regard. If It is for entry into basic flight training, the standards that will be lowered may not be flight time (they won’t have any), rather it will be high school/college grades, extra-curriculars, volunteer experiences, etc.

I would disagree, beyond pregnancy/childbirth, there's nothing biologically different between men and women that makes one want to raise their children more. No I'm not saying there is some secret sexist plan, but just look back at history and society's expectations for men and women.

Good article here with more info https://www.cntraveler.com/story/why...-female-pilots

Do you have any scientific peer reviewed research that shows a large percentage of women being wired differently from their evolutionary counterparts?

Again, it should be a huge discrepancy based on a myriad of factors - several of which have already been discussed.

Agree with you, selective hiring based on race/gender is an issue. But that's not what this is. This is acceptance into a program that has a goal of 50% women and minorities in the program, all of whom must presumably meet whatever requirements there are.

P.S. - Obama’s FAA tried this same **** just 6 years ago in regards to ATC hiring. They just packaged it up a different way. They got rid of the CTI school/military requirement and instead instituted a biographical questionnaire that was actively seeking out less qualified individuals. If you got good grades, were good at math, played multiple sports, multiple extra-curriculars, you scored less points than those who did not. The stated goal from the FAA themselves? To “diversify the workforce”. As you can imagine, the washout rate at the FAA academy went through the roof. Hell, many of them failed the drug test after on boarding, or just never even bothered to show up.

So in your opinion if we dressed young boys in pink and gave them dolls they’d grow up to be nurses and if we dressed young girls in blue and gave them trucks they’d grow up to be pilots? Is that how this works?

Yet.

That number is unfeasibly ridiculous without excluding people based on their race/gender (white men).

In your opinion, is a boy born biologically preferring blue, and a girl born biologically preferring pink?

Answering a question with a question....

This confuses me. If white men make up 31% of the population, and get 50% of the spots into this entry level pilot academy, how are white men being excluded based on their race/gender?

I don't understand what you're asking here.

Pilots are are extremely skewed toward men in a way most other professions aren't. It's that simple. It's a serious outlier and to have absolutely no introspection about that, well it's very disappointing.

If by dressing them in blue and pink, you mean having flipped expectations from men and women, yes I think you would see a very big difference. We have seen that to be the case just in the last 75 years.

My dog wants to fly. He has one wheel from a bum leg and is pushing 10 years old, but I'm sure we can push him through the program. Think they'll modify the crew entry doors for him for the mid flight potty breaks?

What does it even mean to be qualified to enter flight school? You have to know how to do math? I mean come on. A will to work hard is practically all it takes! That and like 40 grand, or large amounts of loans which take decent credit. Being a pilot is flippin easy.

The US military has taken the lead in social issues in this country for many decades. Gender hasn't been a consideration in military pilot hiring for nearly 50 years (other than height for ejection seats and combat restrictions). With the gates wide open for decades, the military hasn't come anywhere near 10% female on the flight deck. For UA to achieve its goal, it will necessarily require a massive disparity in standards due to a sheer lack of volume and interest - it's just basic math, not a comment on any social issue.

I would also add this thought. Have fun negotiating a contract in 15 years if a third of the seniority list is beholden to UA for their only skill set, their employment, and has a $100,000 debt to the company. That should make for a very steely-eyed pilot group at the negotiating table (sarcasm intended).

Pilots are skewed towards men for researchable, easily verifiable, scientific reasons. Types of spatial intelligences, risk aversion, etc.

Women and men, generally speaking, have very differing types of intelligences. Decades upon decades of research has been done on this. There is nothing wrong with that. If you need me to start quoting and linking some peer reviewed journals, I'd be happy to - if you're interested.

Well, obviously United can’t just accept everyone into their exclusive flight school. So the recipients of the coveted slots should be based on race/gender in your mind, not academic performance, quality of character, etc.?

Again, I grant the fact that some things are different. But you've met women pilots, are they simply needles in a hay stack? Or were a lot of them people who had a family member who flew, or just were interested. Many of those I know had experiences like that. It doesn't fit with you insistence that different genes explain that huge discrepancy. Again, all the same goes for people of color. Where is that genetic difference, if you please.

The goal is not for United to have 50% women and minority mainline pilots, its to have 25000 of the 5000 people at their entry level flight academy over the next 5 years be women and minorities.

Which, if they pass still leads to a ‘guaranteed job at United’.... And it is still discrimination. If the tables were reversed, and United’s new Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer (joke of a title anyways) announced their goal is to train 50% white males, you’d all be throwing an absolute ****-fit and rightly so.

So you're saying that there aren't enough women and minorities, which make up 70% of the population, with high enough academic performance or quality of character to deserve 50% of the spots in the academy?

Then why need a quota?

this is not a quota!!!

I'm interested...feel free to post or PM with links, I will read.

Here is a very lengthy one. Worth the read. Maybe not all in one sitting.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270278

Hiring a specified group of people at a specified percentage isn't a quota?

No, I actually agree with you (and science supports) that some of it can be attributed to mere exposure. But there are very real, very scientific reasons that women pursue aviation (and other similar STEM career fields) at astronomically lower rates than men. The push for representative equality (M vs F) in this industry is silly, IMO. It will never come close to happening, and it won't have anything to do with there being some mythical barriers preventing women from entry.

Too bad the facts are somewhat scrubbed from the internet.

That wasn't a 747 at SFO was it?

That's not what this does. It is a 50% quota. Reread the first post slowly, then get back to us genius.

The first post says "ima just leave this right here" with a link to a newspaper article. Not sure what there is to read further in that.

What do you think this program is, if not what I said?

No issues with promoting aviation to the minorities and women to get into the industry. Not by a long shot. In fact, I think that's a fantastic idea... Having said that, going woke with the arbitrary quotas, and trashing the white males is where they lose me.

I'm a Southwest guy, but I hope to God we don't start with this BS. By default, every time I set foot onboard our jet, I couldn't give two sh*ts about the sex or race of the pilots up front. My default assumption is that they're rockstars who had what it takes to get hired.

At Southwest, up until a couple of years ago, every applicant had to have at least 1,000 hours of turbine PIC. That means everyone had to either get promoted to aircraft commander in the military, be a captain of a jet or a turboprop in the civilian world, get selected to interview, pass the interview, get through training and make it online. I've flown with minorities, women, older guys, younger gals, you name it... But one thing NOBODY could do would be question if they've actually earned their place. They all have, hands down, without a shadow of a doubt... their sex, race, ethnicity mattered/matters about as much as the color of their eyes.

But in light of "we're instituting quotas to show how woke we are...", United literally took a giant dump on every single one of their pilots, men and women alike, any race or ethnicity, because now you've put a question mark on every single minority or a female applicant on whether or not they've truly earned their spot, or if they were hired to show some woke idiots' virtue signaling skills. Disgusting!

Out of curiosity, are you familiar with what the requirements are to go from entry into the Aviate program to being hired on by United?

I just happen to be. Out of curiosity, are you familiar with how it’s spun?

Here you go...


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unite...120807373.html

Yes - are you more bothered by how the program actually works, or the PR spin they are doing?