AHEAD IN EMPLOYING WOMEN
By R N Pathak, Director (Public Relation), Indian Airlines Limited

Indian Airlines is probably amongst the very few organisations in the world to employ women in highly skilled vocations such as flying or even maintenance of aircraft. 

Indian Airlines was the first scheduled airline in the world to enroll a woman pilot - Durba Banerjee in August 1966. She made history yet again in May 1987 by becoming the first woman pilot on the wide-bodied Airbus-A300. 

IA created aviation history by operating a flight with all women crew in January 1986. Capt. Saudamini Deshmukh was in command with Capt. Nivedita Bhasin as co-pilot. They flew the F-27 aircraft from Kolkata to Silchar and back with all women cabin crew members. Capt. Saudamini and Nivedita repeated their feat in September 1989, operating an all women Jet flight (Boeing- 737) on Mumbai-Goa sector. 

Capt. Saudamini became the first woman commander on the Airbus A-320, and Capt. Indrani Singh, the first woman commander on the wide-bodied aircraft Airbus A-300. Capt. Nivedita Bhasin went on to become the youngest woman commander at the age of 26. 

Meanwhile, Bhuvanshri Gautam became the first aircraft maintenance engineer in 1987. In 1996, Sushma Chawla became the first woman Director of the Airline, presently heading the Directorate of Systems. 

Today, the airline has as many as 30 women pilots of whom six are commanders. In addition, there are ten aircraft maintenance engineers and 28 aircraft technicians, besides 2793 women in other categories, including cabin crew and general officers. Women constitute over 14% of the total work force in the airline at present.

These include 14 in the executive 'general officers' category, besides 17 line pilots (including five commanders), nine aircraft engineers, 842 cabin crew, 161 officers at the junior level, 28 technicians, 1495 non-technical staff and 258 others in various other positions, including ground staff. 

It is interesting to find women specialising in aircraft engineering, another field normally considered a male preserve. In fact, Ms Bhuvanshri Gautam became the first aircraft maintenance engineer. Talking of "firsts" Ms Sushma Chawla became the first woman Director of Indian Airlines, in charge of Systems. 

Indian Airlines could be termed as one of the first few organisations in the country to change its general attitude towards recruiting women as its record well demonstrates. If it had not been so, Durba Banerjee could not have been enrolled as a woman pilot when other airlines were still fighting shy of engaging women for piloting an aircraft. 

Thus, it is only but natural that in the matter of recruitments, Indian Airlines shows no gender bias – it is the best available and suitable candidate for the vacant position. By employing women in such male dominated cocoons like the cockpit and aircraft engineering, IA has set example for others to follow - what men can do, women can do. Of course, for certain categories, like 'loaders' which require hard physical work, women are not considered. On the other hand, for certain kinds of work, women are the obvious choice. Air hostesses, for instance, are found to be far more responsive in tackling emergency situations speedily or in nursing those who suddenly become ill during a flight. Who could forget the heroic efforts of the late Ms Neerja Bhasin of an American airline or more recently the case of Ms Sadhana Pawar of Indian Airlines who saved scores of lives, unmindful of the enormous risk to themselves?

The story would not be complete without recalling how a long-standing grievance of airhostesses of IA was redressed. Until 1972, the retirement age of IA's airhostesses was 30. The airhostesses felt that this was unfair and after some consideration the airline decided to increase the retirement age limit to 35, reserving its discretion to further increase it to 40, in special cases where the airhostesses were found fit.

Some of the airhostesses, who were still not satisfied, went to court and in 1981, the Supreme Court decided that the retirement age should be 45. Some eight years later, the then Government of India, chose to shower more blessings on airhostesses by issuing an official order raising the retirement age to 58. That has put them on par with the male employees. 

Now all of them are part of one happy family of Indian Airlines. The airline is always keen to keep its staff happy so that it could give its customers a courteous and efficient service. After all that is its business.