Women have hardly made any inroads into airline boardrooms and executive ranks in the past four years, leaving the industry at risk of missing a key 2025 target for female representation.
(Bloomberg) — Women have hardly made any inroads into airline boardrooms and executive ranks in the past four years, leaving the industry at risk of missing a key 2025 target for female representation.
Among 123 listed carriers tracked by Bloomberg, women typically hold just 13% of executive posts, less than the 16% in financial services for example, where representation at board level is 21%. Only JetBlue Airways Corp. has an equal gender split among executives. Twenty-two have no female executives at all.
Those are confronting numbers for aviation leaders gathering Tuesday in Singapore for a summit to address diversity and other post-Covid challenges.
Years of advocacy work on behalf of women and targets to bring in more female managers and directors seem to be having little effect. Marginalization of women at the top has continued even as many airlines attempt to reset and bolster workforces that were depleted during the pandemic.
“The industry has nearly ignored the contributions women could bring,” said Caroline Marete, assistant professor at the school of aviation and transportation technology at Indiana’s Purdue University. “Having representation in key decision-making positions at the national and international levels is key. Women need representation where it matters.”
Companies aren’t blind to the gender imbalance — they’ve been talking about doing better for years. While a handful including Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., Air New Zealand Ltd. and JetBlue have made advances, they are broadly the exception.
Among the 123 airlines, only Canadian tour operator Transat AT Inc. and Air New Zealand achieved an equal split of men and women directors, according to gender employment data collated by Bloomberg. Eleven have all-male boards.
Gender bias hangs over global aviation. Pilots, air-traffic controllers and aircraft engineers are mostly men, cabin crew are predominantly women, and executives and directors are largely male.
Marete of Purdue University said girls should have exposure to aviation and aerospace from an early age to normalize the sectors as all-gender careers.
In 2019, the International Air Transport Association launched its 25by2025 campaign, where airlines commit to increasing the number of women in senior positions and under-represented areas by 25%, or to a minimum of 25% by 2025.
Three years later, in December, IATA said 147 airlines — half of its membership — had joined the voluntary initiative. IATA didn’t provide more recent data or respond to an email asking if the 25by2025 targets will be met.
Airlines haven’t helped themselves in the past. Qatar Airways Chief Executive Officer Akbar Al Baker in 2018 said only a man could rise to the challenges of his job, a year after he described US flight attendants as grandmothers. He apologized for both comments. And it was only last year that Singapore Airlines Ltd. dropped a policy that forced pregnant cabin crew to quit their jobs.
India has the highest percentage of female pilots globally, according to the International Society of Women Airline Pilots, accounting for about 12.4% compared with 5.5% in the US.
IATA said last year that almost 9% of its members had female CEOs. Carriers with female leaders include Austrian Airlines AG, Pegasus Airlines in Turkey, RwandAir and the Air France and KLM units of Air France-KLM.
Ultimately, aviation might have to be pushed harder to improve gender diversity, said Marete.
“The steps that need to be taken are not complicated,” she said. “Perhaps it’s time we hold the industry accountable for the implementation of these solutions.”
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