The Role of Masculine Culture in Shaping Postwar Civil Aviation in the United States

Time: 4:00 pm

Location: Director’s Conference Room, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution

In 1960, 97 percent of civilian pilots in the United States were men. More than half a century later, this figure has barely changed. World War II proved an important turning point in the history of aviation as wartime military flight training and the postwar GI Bill swelled the ranks of civilian pilots with hundreds of thousands of young men. Meanwhile, the vast majority of American women had no such wartime pathway into the postwar cockpit. Other factors shaped the demographics of postwar flying, too. The airlines and military refused to let women fly until the mid-1970s, limiting potential career opportunities for women pilots and leaving an entire generation of postwar girls with few high-profile aviation role models to emulate. But this is only part of the story. This talk will describe how a culture of masculinity within the postwar aviation community helps explain why civil aviation looks the way it does today. Formal flight instruction, combined with informal traditions, screened and acculturated all aspiring fliers – men and women alike – to meet a masculine norm that traced its roots to prewar barnstorming and wartime combat training. Gendered assumptions about what it took to be a real pilot also influenced technical developments, as pilots, most of them male, chose to embrace or shun specific airplanes based partly on accepted masculine ideals. Outside the cockpit, time-honored traditions like “hangar flying,” and even the physical appearance of the thousands of small airports across the nation where most postwar pilots learned to fly, further reinforced the message that flying was by, for, and about men.

Alan D. Meyer is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Auburn University.

For further information, please contact: Tom Lassman at 202-633-2419; lassmant@si.edu.

NON-SMITHSONIAN VISITORS MUST RSVP NO LATER THAN 48 HOURS BEFORE THE SEMINAR. On the day of the seminar, please report to the South Security Desk at the Museum’s Independence Avenue entrance. Those holding SI ID badges may proceed directly to the Director’s Conference Room on the 3rd floor.