to be MAD about bloody Lego Friends airport, where the pilot is a MAN.

[changeshow]

Got Lego Catalogue today. Looking through at all the exciting and colourful stuff for boys. Got to the Lego Friends page. Looking at the nice plane, check the figures.........

FLIGHT ATTENDANT SANDRA and PILOT DAVID. WTAF! Why is the pilot a bloke?!

Did no one at Lego has the wit to say 'errr women can be pilots'?

AIBU to be seriously unimpressed by this? Makes me bloody cross.

Obviously there are female pilots and I didn't die horribly. So that was nice. Maybe Lego could make a mini-fig of Christine

Unfortunately unless Christine likes wearing inappropriately short skirts, flip flops and 80's style hair accessories, she would probably be mortifed if they did!

I have a pilots license and a vagina - do I win a prize ;-)

(well only SE PPL Land, IMC, Night + complex)

To answer a point flying in a skirt is simply not doable I do believe the airline pilot uniforms are trousers. ;-)

To answer another point there are an awful lot of pilots in commercial flying who entered via the forces. Mainly because to get sponsored by an airline is as rare as rocking horse shit - plus to get a ATPL (frozen plus 9khrs) plus complex multi engine experience of your own back is mind bogglingly expensive. An RAF pilot can usually pitch up and say 10,000 hrs on mutli-engine jet. Full IR, plus all ATPL exams thank you very much.

RAF piloting i believe until now has been exlusively male due to restrictions on women in front line combat. I think fast air is still male only - but i do think that now they are training women on the larger fleet of transports.

Having said that the second worst flight i ever took had a woman as PIC and P2 as well as an all female crew. Nothing to do with their frankly top notch flying more to do with the massive snowstorm off the pacific which iced the plane to buggery.

interestingly - the main thing that worries me about flying is what is called human factors. The pilot / copilot not communicating / getting on / fighting etc etc causes far more accidents than system failure. There is almost no work on gender impacting HF - bearing in mind hundreds of lives are at stake this needs people to set aside the socio-politcal question of gender and do some studies...

Though i have been flown in a seaplane with the pilot in shorts and flip flops.

Actually the flip flops got kicked off at the quayside. He flew barefoot.

well it was somewhere really warm and sunny ;-)

Odd - last time I went to an RAF base, back about 10 years ago, they already had women helicopter pilots. I think they've had women fast jet pilots for several years now.

first woman to command an RAF fast jet squadron

But I agree that given that the changes are recent, it'll take a while for these women to leave the service and look for civilian jobs. However, I've come across quite a few women civilian commercial pilots.

The RAF have had female pilots for years and years now.

I have come round to thinking that actually this is a big deal, and I am annoyed about it.

My DC have a mix of Lego ranges, including Lego Friends, and they tend to play with them all together, so I wasn't that bothered about male:female ratios, or females without jobs while all the males are in uniform, because we have lots of the yellow minifigures in a roughly 50:50 male to female ratio, including plenty of possibilities for the women to have jobs and uniforms too, which balances it all out. In fact, my DC much prefer playing with the standard lego figures, because we have so many more of them, and they can customise them more easily - different tops and trousers, different expressions and faces, which you can't do with the Lego Friends figures. Plus we only have 4 LF figures, which is a bit limiting.

But today DD has a playmate round after school, and she absolutely refused to countenance playing with the standard yellow minifigs, or to play with any of the pre-built Lego we had in the box that wasn't pastel-coloured.

I was surprised and taken aback, and finally I properly do see that there is a significant problem with segregating Lego by gender so that some girls, like DD's friend won't consider playing with other Lego, and then feeding those girls who will only play with, or even encounter, that sort of Lego sexist crap, like the pilot in the example above.

How many women have you ever seen flying a plane? ... Not many i bet.
Ah, that explains the feelings of terror I have every time I realise I am in charge of a 170 tonne airliner! I should have realised after 17 years of doing the job that I really shouldn't have been doing it. [Hmm]

It's to do with speed/distance perception, spacial awareness, coordination etc.

Situational awareness is what you are after here, I think. Spatial awareness is something else altogether, although loss of situational awareness can lead to spatial disorientation. Often the best way to avoid this though is to thoroughly think through what you are about to do and check it applies to the situation you are in and whether it is an appropriate action. I suspect this would have been useful to consider before, say, posting something stupid on an Internet forum!

As for speed/distance calculations - it can all be covered by your 3 and 5 times tables. I also find this Adam and Joe Show song very useful. Seriously.

Just to gauge how far we've come, in my chauvinist 70's childhood my brothers had Lego, Meccano, microscopes and guns while I had a baby doll that could cry and wee, decorative dressing table sets and (I kid you not) a dustpan & brush. It's all about role modelling and expectations.

Have enjoyed this thread and I'm really glad there are enough people out there saying 'hang on that's not fair' to keep moving things forward.

I was only joking about not feeling safe with a woman flying the plane etc. I watch a lot of air crash investigations and lack of situational awareness is a big contributing factor in a lot of crashes. I expect women in general would have better situational awareness than men. More observant and perceptive, and better at multitasking.

My serious question is this - why does it matter that there are more male pilots than female? Are you saying something is preventing women who want to become pilots from doing so, that doesn't affect men?

The same question for other industries - engineering is an example. There are many more male engineers than women, but many more men choose to become engineers. Why the massive drive to get more women into engineering? Let them do what they want.

Nursing is a typically female job, but there are some male nurses and nothing to stop a man becoming a nurse. Do you see getting more men into nursing as being as important as getting more women into traditionally male jobs?

McColonel I'm going to presume from your last post that you haven't RTFT, as all your points have been addressed at length.

I was only joking about not feeling safe with a woman flying the plane etc

Shame no one found it funny.

Why the massive drive to get women into engineering?

Because when 50% of your potential pool of talent is groomed away from an area of work for a shitty reason like gender stereotyping, then when the country is desperately short of engineers then the obvious solution is to try to encourage women who would be good at engineering into engineering instead of scrabbling around hiring people from abroad, or hiring people who are crap at engineering but who applied for the job and you need to fill the position.

What does "groomed away from an area of work for a shitty reason like gender stereotyping" actually mean though? Are you saying women who want to become engineers decide not to because they have been conditioned to think of it as a man's job?

The NHS spends a huge amount on foreign agency nurses. Is there a comparable drive to get men into nursing?

RTFT McColonel, you seem incapable of doing anything other than being antagonistic. It's a shame you haven't read the material linked to on this thread, it would answer all of your questions.

Are you saying women who want to become engineers decide not to because they have been conditioned to think of it as a man's job?

It's a bit more complicated than that. Girls are conditioned away from subjects like maths and physics which lead to careers in engineering because of gender stereotyping. We know this because the uptake of STEM subjects in all-girls schools is far higher than it is for girls in mixed schools - the mere presence of boys is an issue. The uptake in girls schools is still much lower than that for boys nationally so there are general societal effects too.

It's not down to ability. So there is a massive pool out there of talented girls who could be really good engineers who need to be encouraged into engineering.

I'm not sure nursing is seen as vital to the economy?

The mere presence of boys is an issue Seriously? I can't believe I just read that.

Shakey - it's a fact, fewer girls in coed schools take STEM subjects. Not the boys' fault; no one is suggesting that. But when boys are present, STEM subjects are presented as/perceived to be a boys subject.

McColonel - this is a particular problem in Britain. Why do you think British girls might be less interested in STEM subjects and careers than girls in neighbouring countries?

"I'm not sure nursing is seen as vital to the economy?"

Well, i would say nursing is a pretty vital role in general, wouldn't you? The NHS would save a huge amount of money if more men became nurses. Surely all logic applied to getting women into engineering etc should also apply to getting men into nursing?

It is the same theme though. In tackling the issue that society enforces an expectation of what women will be and should do one will also highlight the reverse of that - the discrimination against men who want to enter female dominated careers such as nursing.

...and of course male nursing staff will be paid as much as female nursing staff.

Engineering counts for about 25% of UK turnover. What percentage of UK turnover is nursing responsible for?

eandt.theiet.org/news/2015/jan/skills-shortage-engineering.cfm

True about the salary.