In the past month or so I’ve looked at a bunch of articles about how men and women are evaluated differently.
- “Reasons you were not promoted that are totally unrelated to gender” (about women not having a fair chance), was posted by a female genomics pioneer friend to Facebook.
- “THE ONE WORD MEN NEVER SEE IN THEIR PERFORMANCE REVIEWS” (about women being called “abrasive” in performance reviews) was posted by several different friends to Facebook.
- “What Silicon Valley thinks of Women” also showed up on Facebook (about women getting less funding from venture capitalists than men).
- “Is the Professor Bossy or Brilliant? Much Depends on Gender,” a February 6, 2015 New York Times story, was emailed to me. (Students rate male and female professors differently.)
Then Matt Guthmiller showed up to a talk that I was giving at MIT. He is an MIT sophomore and the youngest person ever to fly around the world. He did his trip in a piston-engine unpressurized Beechcraft Bonanza with rear seats replaced by a ferry tank. The longest leg was 16 hours (American Samoa to Hawaii). He was by himself. I asked him how successful he’d been at getting speaking engagements from business groups eager to have him inspire their workers about self-reliance and decision-making under pressure. It turned out that Amelia Rose Earhart, who did a round-the-world trip is in much higher demand as a speaker (video example). Let’s compare the two achievements.
Guthmiller was 19. Nobody younger had ever flown around the world. Earhart was 31 (but in great shape!) and journalists reported that she was the youngest woman ever to fly around the world, ignoring Richarda Morrow-Tait (who did the trip at age 25, leaving her husband and toddler daughter behind in 1948; Morrow-Tait returned home pregnant with her navigator’s child. In 1951, her husband was successful in divorcing her on the grounds of adultery, but Richarda got custody.).
Guthmiller flew solo in a plane that has to go through the weather. Earhart flew with Shane Jordan, a former Pilatus factory pilot and flight instructor, a man with 4500 hours of experience with the Pilatus PC-12, the $4.7 million turboprop that they flew (courtesy of Pilatus and Honeywell!). The PC-12 is a single-pilot aircraft, which means that from a legal point of view Jordan could have done the trip without anyone else on board the aircraft. From an FAA point of view, Amelia Rose Earhart was essentially a passenger. The PC-12 can fly at 30,000′, which is above much of the nasty weather that Guthmiller had to fly through at 10,000′.
In the case of “What do you have to do to impress people with a round-the-world trip?” it seems that women have to do much less than men. If the articles cited above are right, women have to do more than men in other arenas, or at least do things differently to succeed.
But then I thought that perhaps this is actually a good thing. If there were truly one set of standards for everyone, what would be the point of all of the money and effort that companies put into “diversity”? If the tests were comprehensive and perfectly fair, all workers would converge to having the same behaviors and characteristics, sort of like what happens with Ivy League students. At that point there is no diversity in behavior or attitude.
Another way to say this is “If we rewarded women for acting just like men then why wouldn’t they all act just like men and thus eliminate any benefit to hiring women?”
Related:
First of all , Amelia Rose has a famous namesake (though apparently she is no relation).
Second, because most pilots are still men (93%), a female pilot has more “talking dog” value, the same as if Matt had won the Pillsbury Bake Off.
Boooring details such as which plane was easier to fly or whether Amelia was even the pilot flying are of no interest compared to the Amelia Earhart angle.
You wanna see how bad the unconscience bias is built-in,
try watching “MasterChef Junior”
There are three male judges.
First of get dismissed are minority kids, then girls with Only White Boys
get be in the finals.
It has happen for I think every season of the show.
Only blind judging can overcome like they do in Orchestras where more women
are chosen simply because they perform hidden on stage.
If the young Miss Earhart shares only a name with Amelia Earhart and was basically a helpful passenger on a flight coordinated and paid for by others in a relatively safe and high flying turbine airplane than her only contribution to the whole endeavor was being a mildly attractive advertising face for Pilatus…a basically a sexist role. The trip then being promoted as a feminine accomplishment makes the whole thing a conundrum.
The facts that Pilatus didn’t let her take their thoroughly automated airplane out by herself when they very well could have and that they advertise the PC-12 as an airplane designed for single pilots are then just humiliating.
Hilariously, somewhere a Pilatus executive thought to himself,
“Miss Earhart got an instrument rating in an SR-20 last year, if she’d go get high altitude and high performance endorsements we could send her through a PC-12 simulator course so she could do this thing solo and maintain some dignity. But no, no we don’t trust our course to ensure her safety after graduation or because of her lack of experience and possibly ability we just don’t think the cost of the course, possible remedial training and insuring her trip outweigh the costs of our factory pilot’s time and her becoming a subtle sexist abjection. And furthermore, we’ll advertise the whole thing as a “no-squawk” trip and just hope our customers overlook the duplicity.”
Hilarious.
Philip, do you think Pilatus made the right call? Their customers are a little more discerning than the public. I’m actually a little surprised that the Swiss would do something like this so maybe Miss Earhart does deserve some credit for convincing the company to lend her their airplane.
Regardless the whole thing seems a little hard to make sense of.
In those TV chef shows, wouldn’t it be relatively easy to have the judges judge the dishes blind? That’s what they do in barbeque competitions.
But it might take away from the drama. If you look at the credits at the end of most “reality” TV shows, there are people listed as writers. If you are filming reality, why do you need script writers? “Reality” TV is about as real as “professional” wrestling.
As for the “feminist” angle, Pilatus could not care less about feminism – they are in business to sell airplanes, not to promote feminism. You can get caught up with the details of what rating Ms. Earhart possessed, etc. but to the CEO with a $5 million check to write for his corporate aircraft, the question is “is this thing going to get me killed?” and the idea that it was able to circle the earth without killing that pretty girl is reassuring.
From one of the comments in the “Bossy or Brilliant” article:
“For how much emphasis was placed on how students are unconsciously biased towards their professors’ sex, no effort was taken explore alternative explanations. This may just be a language bias more so than a judgement bias.
For example, it’s rare for a men to be described as “beautiful” in comparison to women. Playing with the tool, I learned that men were disproportionately more likely to be described as “handsome.” Both sexes were equally described as “hot” and more often than the other two descriptors. Interestingly, men were significantly more likely to be described as “sexy.” Perhaps the sexualization and focus on looks runs both ways…
This principle can be applied to other descriptors. I find it unlikely that many men would be called “bossy,” but according to the tool they are significantly more “pompous,” “lame,” and “jerks.” Women were not as “genius” but they were more “creative,” “organized,” and “helpful.” Both sexes were equally likely to be described as “difficult,” “ignorant,” “fun,” and “resourceful.”
I encourage everyone to play around with the interactive tool and come to their own conclusions. While the article was interesting, the subject matter was woefully under-explored. It has convinced me that language is gendered more so than students have unconscious gender biases towards their professors. This article smacks of sensationalism and poor research: a biased article about bias. Shame on the NYT for allowing such sloppy journalism.”
Why not celebrate our differences?
John: Did Pilatus make the right call in sponsoring the trip? (we can’t be sure to what extent) Most of their U.S. customers seem to be male pilot-owners of mid-sized businesses and/or rich people who buy fractional memberships in PlaneSense and sit in the back. I don’t think that either group is going to make a purchasing decision based on the fact that a nearly new PC-12 with a factory pilot in the front managed to make it around the world. Nor is anyone with a pilot certificate who has ever tried to buy insurance going to be surprised that nobody wanted to let an inexperienced pilot out solo in a PC-12.
Pilatus doesn’t need to market the PC-12 too aggressively at this point. The hard-working Swiss put the competition, America’s Beechcraft, into bankruptcy. If you want a turboprop with more than four passenger seats you will almost surely be buying a PC-12.