Why are most male flight attendants...

Great Debates
41

Lib: Well, okay. But I still think that gay men are more nurturing than straight men. In general.

Thanks Lib, I think that’s a much nicer and fairer way of putting it. :slight_smile: Still don’t know that I agree with you, but that’s a side issue.

Susanann: *1. Women will end up dominating all the professions and careers that require higher education because this is a long term, so far, unchanging, trend. Women have been steadily increasing their participation in college since 1970, and its not going to change until men do actually start returning to college, and there is nothing/no reason to believe that they will, since they havent as the most recent data as of this year continues to report. *

Now I can’t figure out if you’re trying to argue that women will continue to be an ever-increasing majority in such professions and careers until there are practically no men in them at all, which I think is highly unlikely, or just that women will stabilize at some slight-to-medium majority—say, 60%—of such careers, which I think is less unlikely.

There is simply no reason to think that higher education, and by extension the careers that require higher education, will continue indefinitely becoming more and more female-dominated. That would imply that men would essentially stop going to college in significant numbers, and that seems extremely improbable. Just because women have gone from, say, 30% to 60% of college students over the last few decades doesn’t imply that they’ll go from 60% to 90% over the next few; you can’t just extrapolate the trend that way.

Even the more moderate claim, i.e., that women will end up being a stable majority of maybe 60% or two-thirds of all the educated careers, sounds pretty overstated to me. Remember, women are still significantly in the minority in scientific and technical fields, and there are still a lot of pressures on women to be less career-oriented than men (glass ceilings, mommy tracks, family responsibilities, etc.).

Mind you, I don’t think there’d be anything wrong with all the more highly-educated professions and careers ending up about two-thirds female (as long as men aren’t being discriminated against). I just think it sounds very improbable, at least for the next two centuries or so.

**The only thing you people are proving is the inherrent insecurity, prejudice, and weakness of males, who think that any men who take jobs that females currently/historically predominate in, must be either gay or whimps. **

Yikes, what is with the gratuitous male-bashing in this thread? (And why was I dumb enough to appoint myself hall monitor to police it?) Look, I haven’t seen anybody here saying that “males who take a typically-female job must be either gay or wimps”, or anything of the sort. All that they seem to be asking is, are male flight attendants disproportionately gay, and if not, what is the source of the popular perception that they are? These seem like perfectly fair questions to me, and your attempting to answer them by invoking the alleged “inherent insecurity, prejudice, and weakness of males” seems like pure sexist bigotry. That is no way to fight ignorance.

42

Thet is certainly true in Australia. Although the 60% figure for female graduates is roughly correct women dominate in areas such as the humanities, nursing, teaching, psychology and social work. 32% of male graduates in Australia in 2000 were involved in the 6 highest ranked fields in terms of post graduate salary (dentistry, optometry, medicine, mathematics, engineering and computer science). Only 7.4% of female graduates came from these fields.

gradlink has data on Australian graduates.

43

Don’t forget the important factor that the job has its own culture - this is true of many jobs where one or more of the following factors is present:
-The staff have to work in close quarters.
-The staff have to work together for extended periods.
-The circumstances of the job results in the staff being somewhat isolated from normal life.

When a culture exists, it tends to select those that are suited to working in it - anyone who joins and does not assimilate well into the culture, even though there may be no actual shunning occurring at all, is more likely to find another job and move on than someone who takes to it like a fish to water.

If, purely by chance, the prevailing culture started to work better for gay people than straight, it might tend more in that direction by its own dynamics.

Another, quite similar situation is the staff on board cruise ships - it is my perception (having worked aboard them on and off for several years) that the percentage of gays onboard is higher than the norm, but it could just be that the environment makes them feel less pressure to ‘hide’ and that the perception of greater numbers is in fact nothing more than the perception of less introvert behaviour.

44

Frankly, I think Roche made some excellent points.

To add some more data for those of you who want to know more about the job:

I have a straight male friend (actually, an ex-boyfriend) who is a flight attendant. After college, he was thinking about law school, but couldn’t commit, and thought this might be an interesting diversion while he figured out what to do with his life. He got accepted, went through the training, and then was a flight attendant. With little seniority, the job isn’t great (you don’t get a lot of choice in routes or schedules) and he got tired of thanking people for handing their trash over to him, but it was otherwise a good job for a new college graduate. He roomed with two other flight attendants (one male, also straight), enjoyed the travel perks when he could, got a lot out of the camaraderie among the other F/As. It was also not a bad position to be in, for social life–he was always one a few men among many women. Our relationship ended (we stayed friends).

When the time came for him to do something more, I dunno, “professional,” he found it was hard to leave the life. You get nice stretches of days off, and great (cheap) travel opportunities, and you’re not doing the 9-5 grind. He was used to it, and liked the perks. So he’s still a flight attendant 15 years after college.

I’m unclear about how their uniforms are “feminine.” It’s a white shirt with navy pants, and a suit jacket (which they rarely wear on the plane). That’s feminine? They look like pilots without stripes or epaulets.

45

Maybe another factor to consider is that, up until perhaps 1970, F/A’s were almost all female, and what’s more, good looks were an important factor in their recruitment. Along the same lines, some airlines were actually putting them in miniskirts and other revealing attire. One airline even went so far as to put them in hotpants for a time. Obviously the objective was to appeal to the male passengers who looked on as they walked up and down the aisle of that 707 or DC-8.

Times change, and I think it’s safe to say that by 1975 female F/A’s were not being recruited for looks anymore, nor were they being exploited for their looks in any special way. But the memory of the earlier state of things was still strong in travellers’ minds, and so the job of walking up and down an airplane aisle continued to be associated with being ogled. Given how it takes so very little for a stereotype to be started and then perpetuated, maybe that was how it happened.

46

No, I disagree almost entirely with what you are saying.

The intention wasnt to be “oogled”, or to have stewardesses to be “revealing”, nor for them to be sexy(with very very few exceptions. In fact, except for a very short time on just a very few airlines only in the middle 1970’s, the airlines always made a very big clear effort for the stewardess especially not to appear “sexy” at all, but rather to be very conservative and proper in her appearance and manners.

Up thru the 1960’s, stewardesses went to stewardess school, which was really a charm school, teaching all the women how to use make up, do/cut their hair, personal hygene, and how to carry themselves, how to pour coffee, and how to be a curteous hostess/waitress.

There were very strict rules(under penalty of being fired) for the wearing of lipstick, hair length and style, use of makeup, rouge, eye shadow, colored nail polish, the not wearing gloves and a jacket(which actually covered up - not revealed), strict lengths on hemlines, rules on the wearing of the hat, hose, shoes(usu black pumps - no open toed shoes allowed!- dont even think about it), also rules on weight, height, age, and no marraiges or pregancies allowed,etc.

If you wore the wrong nail polish, you were written up, if you wore the wrong stockings you were written up, 2 or more write ups in a year got you fired. If you gained a few pounds between mandatory monthly weigh-ins, you had 30 days to bring your weight down, else you got fired.

If you got married or pregnant or older, you were fired.

As far as males, there were different rules.

There were always a lot of male stewards on Pan Am flights, thru all decades, and I dont know what their training program was - but it was very obviously definitely not the sameat all as the one for the women, and none of the rules were the same for men as it was for women.

47

(He) don’t wear no dress, (he) don’t wear no tie
Always on the ball, (he)‘s always on strike
Struttin’ down the aisle
Big deal, you get to fly

You ain’t nothin’ but a waitress in the sky
You ain’t nothin’ but a waitress in the sky

Paid my fare, don’t wanna complain
You get to me, you’re always outta champagne
Treat me like a bum
You don’t wear no tie

Cause you ain’t nothing but a waitress in the sky
You ain’t nothing but a waitress in the sky

And the sign says “Thank you very much for not smokin’”
My own sign says “I’m sorry I’m smokin’”
Don’t treat me special, oh don’t kiss my ass
Just treat like me like the way you treat 'em
Up in first class

Sanitation expert and a maintainance engineer
Garbabe man, a janitor,
And you, my dear
A real union flight attendant, my-oh-my

You ain’t nothin’ but a waitress in the sky
You ani’t nothin’ but a waitress in the sky

Oh-ho-ohhh

48

The ones I’ve noticed, I haven’t noticed. That is, if there’s such a thing as “gaydar”, mine is broken. Even openly gay guys at work seem indistinguishable to me until I’m told.
What makes you suppose them gay, anyhow, do they wear scarves instead of ties?

49

The prevalence of gay male flight attendants is probably just a matter of karmic balance. You know, of course, that Hooters Air makes a point of signing up all the pneumatic lesbians they can find. Bow chicka bow bow…

50

Because it’s not a homophobic environment. Why wouldn’t you want to work in a place where you aren’t discriminated against?