Grounded? : female pilots, gender identity and integration into the Australian Defence Force

This chapter addresses the progress of women’s integration into roles that have traditionally been associated with masculine gender identity specifically within the ADF and within aviation. I explore and discuss the reasons why, even without restrictions on women’s service, roles that are defined as masculine do not attract or retain women in anything other than tokenistic numbers. The masculinised cultures of the military and the aviation industry are considered in terms of how they resist women’s participation and how they maintain their gendered identity in the face of increasing pressure to integrate women in greater numbers. This chapter seeks to elucidate the barriers and challenges that female pilots face in the ADF. The most complex of these barriers is the masculine culture of the ADF, which constructs military roles as gendered. The chapter places the role of female personnel in the ADF in societal and political contexts, examining how the military constructs the feminine along lines that are discriminatory and illogical, and how the broader belief systems about gender in the ADF thwart progress toward full gender integration.