Runway Girl Network Op-Ed: A Woman’s Place Is in the Flight Deck and the C-Suite

This Runway Girl Network op-ed highlights that women are vastly outnumbered in the aerospace industry, but they need not be given the right encouragement and the breadth of opportunities in the field. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University President P. Barry Butler, Ph.D., describes a letter he received from a high school student who lamented the dearth of female pilots and astronauts.

Butler agrees that the number of women in the cockpit needs to increase, and offers that there are additional opportunities for women as air traffic controllers and maintenance technicians amid massive demand in those career tracks. He argues that women also need more representation as airline executives. It is time, Butler writes, for women to claim their futures in “all the flight places — general, corporate, commercial, education, government and military.”

He offers as inspiration the example of a young woman who took flight lessons in high school and is now in her third year at Embry-Riddle, where she is on track to launch a business career with one of the major carriers. Butler writes that women need to not only think big when it comes to careers in aviation, but also broadly. There is so much opportunity, he says, for women “to take the controls, in every aspect of the industry.”

The full essay — published in May 2018 — is available to read on the Runway Girl Network website.