Aesthetic labor and female workers in Airline Industry

Abstract: Both men and women are facing multiple gender inequalities in the aviation industry. This paper will focus more on female workers perspective. The issues women are facing in their job are sexualization, stereotyping, inequal rules and treatment compared to men. This paper will discuss the aesthetic labour through the decades and some of the requirements airline companies have, as well as how they will affect women.

Keywords: Aesthetic labour, gender inequalities, sexualization, aviation industry, job requirements

Aesthetic labour means that employers are recruiting employees, because of their looks and physical features. Airline companies have very restricted dress codes for their ground and air staff. They are the people who represent the company and the ones whose customer sees a lot. For that reason, it is important that employees look representable, but some airlines take this too far. Jet Airways says they don’t accept their cabin crew to have pimples or scars and United Airlines doesn’t accept male flight attendants to wear makeup. Airline companies such as Qatar Airways had very strict rules for their cabin members. Employees were not allowed to get married or have kids in the first few years of employment. If they did, they would get fired. (Kim, 2016) However since 2015, those restrictions have been relaxed, although some rules such as female employees must be picked up from work by their male relative or husband are still in place (AFP, 2015).
It is understandable that organizations want to dress their employees the same way because it is aesthetically appealing. Service workers are the first people customers see from the company, and the image should be clean and professional. It is also easier for customers to recognize and find the employees when they are dressed the same, in the company’s uniform.
It’s not right to force women to wear makeup, and not allow men to wear it. It should be everyone’s own choice whether to wear it or not, however, it is understandable for companies to require that the makeup should be appropriate for work and not over the top. It should also be everyone’s own choice and right to decide whether they want to have kids or get married and when they will do it, and not be afraid of losing their jobs because of it. Lastly, people can’t do anything about their acne and scars, and it can be something that already affects them and their confidence a lot. It is saddening that it can be a barrier to having a job as well.

Aesthetic labour has changed a lot over the years. In 1930s airlines were recruiting young female flight attendants and required them to be nurses. This was a selling trick to make passengers feel safer. Young girls wanted to be a flight attendant because they saw it as a glamorous job. The novels of the “glamorous era” of the 1960s were showing females as young and beautiful flight attendants, who are caring and serving customers. The way novels are describing male was that they work as pilots, and are handsome, fatherly and strong professionals. From the 1930s onwards flight attendant job was seen as women’s job. Women had to look feminine and aesthetically pleasing for employees and customers. (Baum, 2011)

In the 1970s airlines advertised flight attendants as sex objects with ad slogans such “I’m Cheryl, Fly me!”, which meant that they wanted to attract mainly male customers on board. (Xiaoni, 2017) Female flight attendant’s uniforms were highly sexualised as well, with tiny shorts and high boots (Lagrave, 2017). The reality of airline cabin crew work is very different from the “glamorous era” and from the picture that these novels and advertisements are showing. From 1980s work of flight attendants has meant, angry customers, delays, overbooked flights, low payment and uncomfortable working environments. (Baum, 2011 7) Flying used to be luxurious and only rich people could afford it, but nowadays flying has been made possible for everyone, with cheap prices and variety of options with airlines and destinations, and for that reason has lost its specialness. (Baum, 2011)

There is a huge difference in the statistics of how many men and women are for example pilots. In 2017 the statistics show that there were 609,306 pilots in total worldwide and of that only 42,694 were women. That makes women’s percentage 7,01%. (Women in Aviation, 2017) A lot has changed since the 1970s, and women are not as sexualised, and flight attendant job is becoming more gender equal. More men are working e.g. as a flight attendant and more women are working as pilots. The change is happening but very slowly.

Gender inequality in the airline industry can be difficult for women and can make them feel like they have to work harder than men to prove that they are just as capable as men. Women might feel discriminated and isolated in male-dominated job’s because the conversations between men can be very inappropriate and they can be teased for working in “men’s” job. There is also a lot of pressure for women to perform in the same level as men. (McCarthy, Budd and Ison, 2015) We need to change the view that these job’s such as piloting and engineering aren’t men’s job and encourage and support young women to go study and become pilots. We could have women pilots or women engineers to mentor young women to give them more confidence that they can do it too. We should welcome all genders to any positions, with equal rules and wages and go towards more gender equal industry.


References:

Baum, Tom. (2011) Working the skies: Changing representations of gendered work in the airline industry, 1930e2011. Available from: https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S0261517711002378 Accessed 14 May 2019

Kim, Soo. (2016). Unusual flight attendant requirements: the good, the bad and the beautiful. Telegraph. Available from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/unusual-flight-attendant-requirements-the-good-the-bad-the-beautiful/ Accessed 14 May 2019

McCarthy. F, Budd. L and Ison. S. (2015) Gender on the flight deck: Experiences of women commercial airline pilots in the UK. https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S0969699715000447 Accessed 17 May 2019

This discussion paper presents and interesting argument into the aesthetic labour of female flight attendants, an issue which I find very interesting and also explored. This issue stands out because society is developing and women are continuously fighting for equality and freedom. Many organisations as such are often critiqued when there is obvious maltreatment or discrimination, however the airline industry has received little attention on their outdate requirements for female flight attendants. British Airlines flight attendants underwent a 2-year dispute before allowing their flight attendants to wear trousers (The Guardian, 2016).

The author clearly outlined the history of aesthetic labour within the airline industry, particularly in the 1970s when the aesthetic labour of female flight attendants peaked and the professional role was undermined through crude sexual innuendos in advertising. For future consideration it would be interesting to learn about how women fought against the increased sexualisation of flight attendants in the 1970s through the use of unions and similar organisations such as the Stewardess for Women’s Rights. The organisation argued that sex-orientated airline advertising was deceptive and degrading to stewardesses and other women and their organisation contributed to illegalising marriage, pregnancy and age requirements as well as increased the average occupational tenure increased from 15 months in 1965 to 6 years in 1975 (SNAC, 2019).

Overall this is an interesting and well written paper which highlights contemporary issues within the airline industry and the wider issue of representation within tourism and tourism workers. Women dominate a large sector of the tourism industry workforce, particularly low skilled elementary job roles, representing 79% of all flight attendants in comparison to 7% of pilots. Aesthetic labour is often exploited in female dominating industries which portrays an inherent gender discrimination controversial to contemporary society.

This conference paper explores the issued faced by female workers surrounding aesthetic labour in the aviation industry. However, the author does not fail to recognise that both men and women are mistreated. This topic is of a similar interest to my own research and conference paper thus selecting this as an appropriate piece of literature for me to comment on. Furthermore, the way in which the writer presents the information in this paper is unconventional (presenting the history of the ‘aesthetic labour’ after explaining the modern-day issues) however, it works for this style of writing.

The author explains the concept of aesthetic labour and defines it to be the way in which employers recruit their employees primarily based on their ‘looks and physical features’. With my understanding of aesthetic labour, I believe that it would be useful to explore the benefits or motivations behind organisations using aesthetic labour for their profitable growth. Warhurst and Nickson (2007), express that the motivations behind a company’s usage of aesthetic labour can be influenced by the competitive advantage gained through the exploitation of ‘appealing’ attributes of their employees. This evaluation fits in with the authors historical timeline of aesthetic labour within the aviation industry, especially when expressing the advertisement techniques in the 1970’s in which sexual slogans were used to encourage the male clientele to fly with their company because of the female flight attendant’s appearance.

This paper highlights major issued faced by women daily when working for an airline including the expectations for specific dress coding and makeup criteria with extreme cases displayed. One example is Jet Airways in which employees are not allowed to be seen with pimples or scars on their face and are required to be covered with makeup. Following on, further limiting regulations are implemented by a company like Qatar Airways including the ban of marriage and children in the first years of employment with the company. I think it is interesting to consider the moral standing behind these companies, and whether their organisational structure is the problem as it does not seem to be focused on the wellbeing of their employees. With the raise in awareness for mental health and the statistics that 1 in 4 people suffer from mental health every year in the UK (Mind, 2017), it would be a sensible and ethical discussion for companies to consider the repercussions of instigating certain regulations that may benefit the company at the expensive of an employees wellbeing.

Lastly, the author explores current issued faced when comparing males and females in the aviation industry. It is expressed that females are discriminated against due to the higher percentage of males in the job. This was supported by evidence showing that statistically 7% of pilots worldwide are female. Although this suggests that there are less women in these jobs it does not provide an argument to support their claims that conversation between male employees are ‘inappropriate’ as well as female employees being ‘teased’ which instigates the feeling of isolation for the working women in this industry. Overall, this paper displayed good understanding of the different factors that can affect the females in this industry and successful presented their work.


Mind (2017) Mental health facts and statistics. Available from https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/statistics-and-facts-about-mental-health/how-common-are-mental-health-problems/#one [accessed 22 May 2019].

Warhurst, C. and Nickson, D. (2007) Employee experience of aesthetic labour in retail and hospitality. Work, Employment and Society, 21(1) 103-120.