Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants

This gen-x feminist has certainly flown on more than my share of flights thanks to airline deregulation (1978), but having grown up after sex discrimination laws were passed, I also did not previously have the full understanding of all the historical nuances which went into achieving legislative battles making the skies sexism free. It was interesting to read how the stewardess position (as it was then called) became so tightly controlled, ironically having originally developed in an era when there were few other 'interesting' employment opportunities available to women. By the 1950's, the airlines had codes of stewardess conduct which look a million times stricter than anything handed down at my workplaces. Expected to retire at age 35, a woman had to meet certain mandatory height and weight requirements, and could not be married or have any children in order to successfully perform her duties to her customers at all times. Barry's research methodologies expressly delineate though that the airlines, reflective of the larger society's biases, only hired white unmarried girls for these 'jobs' but tellingly did not treat them in the appropriate manner an employer would treat their employees. A stewardess was expected to thanklessly fulfill many tasks simultaneously, mother, sex-pot/kitten, nurse---but in the cruel twist of irony, she also was not welcomed in the union ranks as an equal after undergoing all of these horrific working conditions, the women were expected to continue letting male union leaders represent them as had been the previous tradition. Rather than be docile, that ongoing disparate treatment inadvertently galvanized the women into taking action for each other. Sisterhood wasn't a `trendy slogan' each other was all they had. In the 1970's. a organization called Stewardesses for Women's Rights protested the airline industry's increasingly sexist treatment of women employees and that organization also joined the national campaign for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. I'm certain that airline officials were not intending to create a crop of highly creative and very ticked off feminist activists!