Flying Fashions: American Women and Early Flight, 1903–40

Although the numbers of American women pilots were small by comparison to male pilots (less than five percent), a versatile group of American women embraced a wide variety of new opportunities in the aviation industry during the early decades of the twentieth century. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Air Commerce’s report in 1936, opportunities “for women in aviation were not lacking.” Airwomen worked as aircraft salespeople and demonstration pilots for major manufacturers, such as Beechcraft, Bellanca, and Cessna, among others. One flew an autogiro, a rotary wing aircraft, as a corporate pilot for Standard Oil of Ohio. President Franklin Roosevelt appointed another to serve on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Aeronautics employed five additional women aviators for its National Air Marking Program, which improved aerial navigation by establishing visible markers on rooftops and water towers. Several other women established, owned, and managed small airports. Women earned less as airport hostesses, airline traffic representatives and managers, and flight stewardesses. Numerous others became flight instructors, as well as managers and co-owners and operators of flight schools and fixed-based operations that provided fuel and ground services for arriving aircraft. Women also gave public lectures and wrote books and articles on aviation topics, earning as much as $500 per article, a considerable sum in 1929.

American women claimed new identities as aviatrixes, often as single or married working women, helping support themselves or their families especially during dire economic times of the Great Depression. U.S women pilots challenged traditional gender norms and barriers flying airplanes, exhibiting mechanical skills, and wearing overalls and air fashions that often blurred the lines between the genders. By being more visible, geographically mobile, and independent, this aerial avant garde broke preconceived notions of acceptable behavior for their gender in the early twentieth century.

Decisions over what aviatrixes wore became a critical part of their strategy and struggle for acceptance as aviators. The term “fashion,” can signify more than the usual way people dressed; it can also be associated with other behaviors, including differences in style, attention to habits, trends, use of language, or even the conducting of business meetings and practices. Social groups could have unwritten rules that were supposed to be followed, as well as standards for unacceptable behavior. By experimenting with new clothing styles, aviatrixes became negotiators of change of their gender norms and identities in the early twentieth century.

The poster will include photographs and documents from the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., the archives of the 99s, International Women’s Pilots organization in Oklahoma City, International Women’s Air and Space Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, the History of Aviation Archives at the University of Texas at Dallas, the Center for Southwest Research at the University of New Mexico, San Diego Air and Space Museum, Boeing Archives, and the Museum of Flight in Seattle.