At Home in the Air: Domesticity and the Careers of U.S. Women Pilots, 1929–39

This paper examines the career aspirations and obstacles U.S. women pilots faced when seeking steady employment in aviation during the late 1920s and 1930s.  Several hundred highly resourceful and versatile women in the U.S embraced a wide variety of new opportunities in the industry as demonstration pilots and salespersons, flight instructors, airport managers and operators, federal air marking pilots, among other jobs.   By working in an overwhelmingly male dominated field, women pilots raised new questions about women’s proper roles in society.   Their struggle for equality in the workplace reflects women’s aspirations, changing values in American society, particularly perceptions of single and married women, motherhood and work, after gaining the vote in 1920.   This paper seeks to examine who these women were, the types of employment they were able to obtain, and information (if any) about the wages they earned.  Works by Alice Kessler-Harris suggests that despite the prejudices against women working, as a group they often had an easier time than men in obtaining employment during the Depression. Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work:  A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).  My research suggests that women fliers, thanks to being a novelty, often had an easier time obtaining employment in sales than many male pilots during the Great Depression.  However, my research also concludes that those who became employed in aviation services still conformed to existing social norms for women by occupying positions of lesser status and subordinate to male pilots, having been banned from flying for the military and the airlines.  Women pilots nonetheless had definite promotional value, which led to greater economic opportunities between the world wars.