Masculinity and the Making of Trans-Canada Air Lines, 1937-1940: A Feminist Poststructuralist Account

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, Mar 2006 by Mills, Albert J, Mills, Jean Helms

It was in this context that Johnson, Colyer, Lewis, Larson, Stevens, Straith, and West learned the ropes in the aviation business. It was not only a business constructed from different forms of military and competitive forms of masculinity, but one where women were absent from almost all of the core jobs. Despite the high profile of a number of women flyers at the time, women were effectively barred from commercial flying. This briefly changed in 1934 when Helen Richey was hired as a copilot with the small Central Airlines. A change in government rules that restricted female commercial airline pilots to fair weather operations forced Richey to quit the following year; it was the 1970s before the next female pilot flew for a US commercial airline.

Women did manage to enter the airline business as stewardesses in 1930. By this point, U.S. airlines were attempting to build their passenger services but were coming up against a general reluctance of people to fly. Although the established practice in Europe was to hire male stewards, mimicking the practice on first-class ocean liners and railway services, UAL's Philip G. Johnson was convinced to hire young nurses. This was thought to provide a gendered psychological edge whereby the very idea of young women as flight crew would encourage grown men to fly (Nielsen, 1982). The insistence that these young women have nursing credentials was in part to convince the flying public of the propriety of the move and in part to assuage management's initial reluctance to hire women. That this move was controversial within the industry can be seen in the fact that Eddie Rickenbacker, head of Eastern Airlines, flew to UAL's headquarters to pressure Johnson to change his mind. Within UAL itself there was resistance from the pilots who argued that they were too busy flying to look after a helpless female crew member (Nielsen). Nonetheless, once UAL started the process, other airlines followed suit including American (in 1933), TWA, Western, National, and even Rickenbacker's Eastern Airlines in 1934. Rickenbacker was sold on the idea that female flight attendants would be useful "to allay the fears of our potential lady customers" (Rickenbacker, 1967, p. 246). In all cases, female flight attendants were required to be young (early 20s), physically attractive (controlled through height and weight restrictions), and possess nursing qualifications. As a commentator of the time expressed it, "the airlines viewed their stewardessnurses ... not as medics but as professional nurturers" (Corn, 1983, p. 89).

From within the formative years of civil aviation in the United States, Johnson and his small band of instructors imposed their own strict standards on the newly formed TCA and, in the process, "created a solid esprit de corps, a mystique almost, that persisted long past the era when everyone in TCA knew everyone else" (Smith, 1986, p. 59). These instructors were

tough and at the top of their field [and] quickly set the pattern for the new TCA and established [exacting] standards of performance and reliability . . . From the start, their emphasis was on discipline and the over-riding importance of safety - a lesson they drilled into everyone down the line, not merely the pilots (Smith, p. 59).