Gendered Airs?: Gender Studies and Aeronautics

Résumé 0

The success of the Top Gun’s sequel reminds us of the appeal of the glorious, reckless, non-conformist, seductive aviator who rides ever-faster motorbikes and planes and is ready to go beyond the limits set by his contemporaries. If a woman did slip into one of the cockpits, Tom Cruise and his peers once again demonstrate the triumph of muscular and seductive men wearing Ray-Bans and leather jackets when not at the controls of fighter planes. In the meantime, a quick internet search using the key words “stewardesses” reveals numerous more or less sensationalist articles revolving around the theme of gender and associating these workers to the sexual potential of their bodies: an Air France stewardess accusing pilots of “verbalised rape”, an internal Transavia sex scandal in 2016, repeated sexual assaults on cabin crew members during a Frontier Airlines low-cost flight in 2021… The relationship between aircrew and the gender system is strikingly strong. A historical analysis provides an insight into the basis of this relationship. In fact, the entire aeronautical sector is articulated around gendered representations, which are particularly embodied in the emblematic figures of pilots – bastions of masculine heroism – on the one hand, and stewardesses – archetypes of a celebrated and fantasised femininity – on the other. The latter have already prompted a few works, particularly in the English-language literature, where socio-historical analyses through the prism of gender seem to be better established. This thematic issue of Nacelles aims to deepen this knowledge, without simply compiling data on the various professions that make up the world of aeronautics. It explores how a social object as massive as aviation is structurally linked to the gender system.