From humble beginnings
In this Women of Aviation Week we’re celebrating the achievements of the Australian women who have contributed to the development of the industry over the past century.
Women have played an important role in the founding of Australia’s aviation industry. In the United States, pilots such as Amelia Earheart and Bessie Coleman made headlines around the globe with the feats of courage, tenacity and overcoming the adversity they faced in pursuing a career in aviation at the time.
Young women in Australia saw these accomplishments and dreamt big. One was Nancy Bird Walton. Known as the ‘Angel of the Outback’, Nancy Bird always aspired to a career of flying. During a time where aviation was a curiosity for women, other women such as Jean Burns, Millicent Bryant and Mary Bell also had ambitions to make a living out of flying and being a pilot. Under the tutelage of Charles Kingsford Smith, Nancy Bird, who at the age of 19, became Australia’s youngest woman to gain a pilot licence.
One of Walton’s first achievements was helping to establish the first air ambulance service to regional New South Wales. Her trusty de Havilland Gipsy Moth was used as an air ambulance. Nancy Bird continued to operate the service, purchasing a better-equipped aircraft and eventually expanded the air ambulance service into Queensland where the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia had yet to branch into.
In 1950, she founded the Australian Women Pilot’s Association, an organisation that advocates, supports and promotes the role of female pilots around Australia in the areas of equal treatment and pay for female pilots.
After a long life of breaking through barriers, Nancy Bird passed away in 2009 at the age of 93. Her legacy and achievements have become part of the Australia’s aviation story, with the new Western Sydney Airport named the Nancy Bird Walton International Airport.
A new era
As the jet age began, pilots who had flown for the armed forces during World War II were recruited to fly the first commercial passenger jets – and all were men. The innovation and advances made by women through the early days of aviation, through the Depression and WWII, began to be overshadowed and aviation became a male-only profession – for pilots anyway. Women who wanted to work in the industry during the 1950s and 60s were largely relegated to cabin crew or front desk duties for airlines at airports.
However, in the 1970s and 80, attitudes and stereotypes were tested by a new generation of women wanting to forge a career in aviation.
One was Deborah Lawrie. Having wanted to become a pilot from an early age, she obtained a commercial pilot licence at the age of 18. By 1976, she had logged 2,600 flying hours and become a general aviation flying instructor and charter pilot.
Becoming an airline pilot was her aim but during those days, women were not given the same opportunities as men. She applied for Ansett Airline’s pilot training program, only to be rejected repeatedly, while her male flight instructor colleagues were being accepted.
Reg Ansett stated that it was his company’s policy to hire only male pilots because pilots needed strength – even though there were no tasks requiring physical strength. He also argued the unions would object, women’s menstrual cycles made them unsuitable, and pregnancy, childbirth and child rearing would disrupt a woman’s career, jeopardising safety and incurring extra costs for the company.
And so began Deborah Lawrie’s fight to secure equal employment rights for women to be considered for airline pilot positions.
In the case Wardley v Ansett Transport Industries Pty Ltd (Wardley was Lawrie’s married name, having only got married days before the case), the newly created Victorian Equal Opportunity Board declared that it was illegal for Ansett not to employ a qualified and experienced pilot based on sex and ordered the company to include Lawrie in their next pilot training program.
But this wasn’t the end of the battle. Even though Lawrie was allowed into the pilot training program, she faced relentless misogyny and sexism. The airline would not progress her in the program, where her male colleagues did. It even attempted to dismiss her entirely for an alleged near miss during a training flight at Moorabbin Airport.
Only when Rupert Murdoch took over the airline in 1979 did the discrimination cease. He ordered equal treatment for female and male pilots.
After completing her training, Lawrie finally achieved her dream and became Ansett’s first female pilot. She stayed with company until the 1989 pilot’s industrial relations dispute. Since then, Lawrie has flown with KLM in the Netherlands, Jetstar, Tiger and Virgin Australia. In 2023, she was honoured by having the new Sydney Airport gateway bridge named after her, in recognition for her trailblazing achievements.
During the same period, Sharelle Quinn became one of the first 2 female pilots at Qantas. She was able to do so after Deborah Lawrie’s fight for women to fly as pilots for commercial airlines. In 1992, Quinn became Qantas’s – and Australia’s – first female captain. Years later, Quinn was in charge of the final flight of Qantas’s Boeing 747 jumbo jet.
A bright future
In the present day, women make up a high proportion of roles once considered ‘male-only’. This article talks about female pilots who have broken barriers to pursue their dreams, but there are women all over the aviation industry who have done the same.
For instance, in the maintenance sector more and more women are studying to become licenced maintenance engineers (LAMEs). Women also make up many senior executive roles across all Australian airlines, as well as within CASA and other transport safety regulatory bodies.
CASA celebrates and continues to encourage more women to get involved and pursue careers in aviation – because sky’s the limit!
