He never lets me preflight the airplane. He always assumes that I need more help than I actually do during my flight lessons.
These are just a few of the comments I’ve received over the years from female students regarding male flight instructors. Clearly, some male instructors aren’t sure how to behave around or train their female students. Having taught quite a few women to fly over the years, here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.
In the mid-1970s I made the acquaintance of Cindy Rucker—one of the first women airline pilots with Western Airlines. To say that Cindy was a competent pilot and flight instructor was a galaxy-sized understatement. One day I asked her about the difference between teaching men and women. She replied that I should never assume that there was a difference unless one became apparent. With a single sentence she neutralized any preconceptions I had about teaching female students. Over the years, I learned that there are biological, cultural, personality, and experiential differences between men and women. For instance, 30 years ago you could almost always count on male students having more mechanical experience (think automobile repair, Lincoln Logs, and fort building) than females.
Today, this is a distinction without much of a difference. We live in a computerized, digital world. We’re more likely to replace things (or hit them with a shoe) than repair them because repair often is not a do-it-yourself task. Think about it. How many men do you know in their 20s or 30s who have ever worked on a car? Today, if an engine stops working and a fellow lifts the hood to fix it, he’s hoping to see a gigantic circuit breaker down there that simply needs resetting. Then there’s this thing called chivalry, where men are inclined to perform manual duties for others, females in particular. It is best, however, that male instructors not take their suit of armor onto the flight line. Don’t do for a female student what you wouldn’t do for a male student. That means you shouldn’t help her with the difficult parts of preflighting unless she needs help. If she’s not tall enough to check the fuel, then get her a ladder. If she doesn’t have enough upper body strength to perform certain maneuvers, don’t avoid or dumb down the maneuver. Instead, find a way to compensate. I’ve taught several women who didn’t have the upper body strength to hold the elevator aft in a Cessna 210 during a steep turn. So I let them use trim, whose purpose is to reduce pilot workload. Then there was my female student who couldn’t continually depress the rudder pedal with one leg during single-engine flight in a twin Cessna. She asked if she could use two feet on the rudder pedal for single-engine operations. No regulation prevents this, nor was her behavior unsafe (as decided by me and the FAA inspector who signed her multi rating). Of course, if your students—male or female—can’t meet your minimum standards for safe flight, they shouldn’t fly. Period.
There is, however, one very distinct difference between female and male students: Generally speaking, women tend to follow directions better than men. They’ll do exactly what you tell them to do. Men are inclined to improvise and test the limits of the behavioral envelope. That’s why a good instructor might begin the training of male students by placing special emphasis on the need to listen carefully and follow directions precisely during the early stages of training, while promising them improv opportunities later.
This is why women become proficient at what they practice, but generally only at what they practice. Men tend to interpret directions liberally, often resulting in the exploration and acquisition of a larger range of behaviors. Your male students might mischievously stumble onto the idea of combining a crab and sideslip for crosswind correction; your female students will certainly acquire the technique if and when you teach it to them. If you need proof of this assertion, just take a look at who’s doing the drag racing on your local street.
Of course, these differences between men and women are generalizations, which is a good thing. There can be no such thing as wisdom without them. So become wise. Don’t assume a female student needs to be taught differently than her male counterpart. But do recognize and utilize any difference that might exist to train all your students properly.
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