As part of Her Campus Aberdeen’s celebration of International Women’s History Month we are looking back in history to admire the women who came before us. With the incredible team of female pilots of Royal Brunei Airlines being the first to land a plane in Saudi Arabia (where women aren’t allowed to drive) and making history, we thought it would be the perfect time to admire those women who have made such a feat possible.
Perhaps the most notable female pilot is the well-known wonder-woman Amelia Earhart! Earhart disappeared on July 2nd 1937 and was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic. While her disappearance remains a mystery to this day, she received the US Distinguished Flying Cross for her incredible accomplishment. Furthermore, Amelia Earhart was the author of many best-selling books about her experiences in aviation and formed an organization for female pilots, The Ninety Nines. Though she is admired long after her disappearance, she was an inspiration of her time as well; in 1935 she joined the faculty of Perdue University as a member of their Aviation Department to inspire other women with her love and passion for aviation as well as advising other women on their career paths. Earheart was also passionate supporter of the equal rights movement and a member of the National Women’s Party. It was under the name of Perdue University that she attempted to circumnavigate the globe in 1937, during which she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean.
Amelia Earhart could not have achieved so much without the help of other women. In 1906 Lilian Todd became the first woman to design an aeroplane, which later flew its maiden voyage by Didier Masson in 1910.
Another woman with an incredible legacy is Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Coleman. She was the first woman of African-American and Native American descent to own an international pilot license. Even though she held this license, the boom in commercial flying was decades away and the only way that Ms Coleman could use her skills as a pilot to make money was to become a stunt flier and perform for paying audiences. Unfortunately there was no one in America who was willing to teach a woman do the skills she would need to do accomplish this, so in 1922 she set off for Europe. Bessie Coleman spent two months in France completing an advanced course in aviation before training with one of the chief pilots of the Fokker Company in Germany. For the next five years ‘Queen Bess’ was a hugely popular pilot admired by both the African-American and white communities in America. In September of 1922 Coleman was lauded as being “the world’s greatest woman flier” by the Chicago Defender newspaper. Ms Coleman’s greatest dream was to open a school for aspiring young African-American aviators; though she died before this dream could be put into fruition, Ms Coleman remains an inspiration to women of all races, future aviators and those of us determined to succeed.