Kien-k'ang • The Themiclesian Women's League says today despite repeated statements to the contrary from the Chief of Air Staff, sexism continues "with little consciousness to the contrary" in the Air Force as far as opportunities, promotions, and salaries are concerned.
According to information presented by "an anonymous source", women of credentials similar to men are promoted less frequently and to "less desirable" positions. This nebulous term, "less desirable" positions, varies from place to place and time to time, but it seems to point towards those where opportunities to contribute positively or conspicuously are less frequent. The League has admitted it is "very challenging to find convincing proof that sexism was afoot," but the Chairwoman believes she has found some.
"We have surveyed the credentials of men and women promoted in the Air Force for the last 50 years, and we can demonstrate that between women and men of equal standing and to equally-perceived positions, women are promoted only 41% as frequently as men. In the space of a year or two, or even five years, this might be an accident. Consistently across 50 years, we are of the opinion it is not. This has been challenging to demonstrate, because overall women are promoted roughly as frequently as men of the same credentials, but the disparity only appears after the position to which women are promoted are taken into account."
Feminist historian Julie Cartier writes to this paper:
The sexism in the Air Force is very different from what you might expect in other branches or other nations' forces. It is not the sort of discrimination that manifests as bellicose machismo and loutish male chauvinism, but a far more subtle, sinister sort. Air Force officers are very respectful towards women, but they have a great reticence to consort with them, to recognize them, and to place them in positions of trust. You will most certainly not find aviators that discriminate against women visibly or audibly. They will not slut-shame or fat-shame, and they even speak out against name-calling. In 2004, when a soldier was revealed to have drawn pornographic images of women on his wall, a thousand airmen signed a petition to remove him from his service for "objectification the female sex". In 2005, the Air Force started a campaign to ban all pornographic material that depict women in a degrading light. Indeed, it has imposed fines on disrespectful language towards women as early as 1958.
However, all these efforts are a sham. In January 1952, the Air Force declared that it would "utterly dismantle all regulatory barriers to service on the grounds of sex." It is the second combat branch to do so, after the Marines in December 1951, who made this astonishing commitment after the House of Lord's decision. The TAF made several pointed references to ensure that the media would receive it in the light of a progressive, female-friendly force. It was very, very successful. In fact, it singled out the Marines as not having done enough to protect the right of women to serve, saying that "an empty promise such as 'respecting women's right to serve' is insufficient to rectify the injustices that the armed forces have all committed in ages past. We seek to be the first to make a genuine, active attempt to become a sex-blind force." This speech, which has stuck in the public imagination, is the Air Force's shield to outside inspection. The fact that air forces internationally tend to be more egaltarian has not helped women gain equal footing in this country's air force, which much of the public assumes to be of a similar disposition as foreign ones.
But to understand the Air Force's closet denigration of women, you have to look beyond its military cloak. You must look at its heart. Indeed, it is so different from other forms of military sexism because it is not military. The Air Force's sexism has nothing to do with its military functions. Let us recall that the Air Force's predecessor was the League of Aviators, which was, in the 1910s, a private, elite, male sports club. The league was made up of all-male clubs. What is little-known is the League of Lady Aviators, which was founded in 1909 and still exists today. This league was was made up of all-female clubs. Thus, in the early days, aviation was already a segregated sport. It is not surprising then when the League of Aviators became the TAF, it naturally was an explicitly-male institution, one which had a female counterpart. Believing that the Air Force was simply the successor to the League, airmen thought that airwomen had their own league, only it was not militarized. Thus, the inclusion of women in the League-cum-Air-Force was seen as an incursion, an unwelcome and unnatural one. 1940s Air Force leadership would have believed that, if women were to fly, they should be formed into their own all-female air force.
Why was this absurd belief held? Once again, the Air Force's past holds the keys. Aviation was an expensive sport, one only middle-class families can afford. Middle-class Themiclesians in the early 1900s accepted gender boundaries in social circles much more strictly than lower-class families. While men and women dined together, they did not socialize with each other. Men had male friends, while female ones were naturally suspected as mistresses; women and female friends, while male ones were thought of as lovers. While working conditions forced lower-class men and women to share social circles, this did not apply to the leisured middle class, which held their sexual segregation as a point of pride, of middle-class morality. This morality contrasted with the perceived depraved hedonism of the upper class and ignorant looseness of the lower. It was the identity of the middle class. The Air Force was, in substance, an outgrowth of the male circle. Today, there are still middle-class clubs that are all-male or all-female, an echo of a departing past; the Air Force is unwilling to say goodbye to their elite roots. The class largely responsible for establishing industrial power in this country, which in the early 20th century that measured personal worth by wealth was a glorious heritage.
For a long time since, the Air Force held itself to be a middle-class force, first and foremost. It was not an upper-class force, like the Gentlemen-at-Arms. It was not a lower-class force, like most of the Army. It did not have bases; it had club-branches. It did not have barracks; it had accomodations. It did not use the word "promotion" but "preferrment". Airmen referred to each other as "sir", which sounds stuck-up in any context. While class-consciousness waned in the 50s, the Air Force's allure as a middle-class institution still gave it an unmistakable air [not intended] of superiority. Yet it is also because this form of sexism is so distant from military necessity that makes it difficult to identify and rectify. In the 70s the Army was criticized for not admitting females to its special forces, while it deflected saying that no female candidate has met its physical standards. When it was shown in court that one female did and was overlooked, the Exchequer of Appeal ordered it to comply. And it did. But in the Air Force this would never happen, as there are simply too few objective standards. It was not as easy to judge whether a pilot was a good pilot, or a mechanic a good mechanic; a lot came down to judgment, and this is where the inborn sexism seeps in.
But being a middle-class force also meant it couldn't go against the government. That was vulgar. There were no ugly rebuttals like the Army proffered, refusing to admit females to small parts of its hierarchy. While the Army was in the hands of the middle class in the 50s, it was more ready to accept reforms than in the 60s, when the officers who grew up in the PSW graduated to steer it. "We saved the country" led them to test the government's patience, and as we know it did not end well the upstarts. The Air Force never suffered from this problem, smoothly sailing past the government's reprehensions as the Army got all the negative attention. A different article will address the problem of class consciousness in the Air Force, where an unnaturally-large portion of officers are from a middle-class background. Furthermore, the image of the middle-class Air Force officer, doffing his hat at a well-dressed lady, so much more palatable to the sight than crude humour from front-line soldiers or sailors, seems to conceal the ugly sexism. Besides, the Air Force had a female chief-of-staff between 1979 and 1982, making it the first branch to have one. Again, this reinforces its image as champion of equality, when the femininity of the chief-of-staff has [expletive] to do with the fact that women under her were not promoted at a fairer rate.
Well done, Air Force. Like the new stealth fighter, you have concealed yourself so well.