For many years females were absent from the maintenance business and in fact the presence of a skirt out in the hangar or ramp environs would cause a cessation of work, gawking and some "un-PC" remarks from some of the cruder members of the brotherhood. Of course, during WW II, Rosie the Riveter became famous and women played a huge role in the production battle to turn out the tools of war. They labored in the factories and out on the ramp. They even flew the fighters and bombers as ferry pilots. When the guys came back from fighting it was expected, naturally, that they would gracefully withdraw from the "men’s" work and go back to the Kinder and Kitchen. Many did of course and the industry lapsed back to its predominently male atmosphere. The ladies were still there, but now as
secretaries and stewardesses.
Female contact was rare indeed and actually difficult for some. I saw this syndrome in full flower years later when the airline got into one of its periodic fads and adopted a new management style. For a while it was called "positive reinforcement," where you praised the good qualities of your worst worker but only lightly mentioned the bad qualities that were driving you crazy. This led to a confrontation in a management seminar where a supervisor said he had a worker who had a string of aircraft damages to his discredit. The supervisor wanted to know if he should congratulate the errant worker for making a smaller hole than last time.
Possibly because of attitudes like this, the airline decided to reappraise its line supervisors. All of them had come up through the ranks and were at the least knowledgeable of their craft if possibly lacking in refinement. I was selected to be trained as an appraiser, one of those who would rate the people being assessed. Not a comfortable assignment when judging your peers.
Sure enough I was assigned to review a group from a large southern station. I was one of three "appraisers" pulled for duty along with a human resources (HR) rep. It turned out there were two HR reps to work with us. One was male and the other was female, beauteous and given to wearing mini-skirts to display trophy quality legs. The first supervisor appraised ran the cleaning shop, a hellish place in that hot climate with no air-conditioning.
Old Charlie had run that shop for a long time. That he chewed tobacco was easy to figure out but he was sensible enough to give it up during this session. The appraisers with the male HR rep first interviewed him and asked him to explain his management style. His style was fair, even-handed, but brooked no nonsense and his opinions provoked some head-shaking from HR.
The next part of the appraisal process required the candidate to role-play and simulate giving counseling to an errant employee. Charlie was seated in front of us and an empty chair awaited the person playing the role of the employee with an attendance problem.
Charlie was nervous of course, since the word was out that these assessments were career curdling if it came out badly. He braced himself. The door opened and in came the female HR rep to play the role. She wore her signature outfit and old Charlie’s jaw dropped. Good thing he didn’t have a "chaw" going at the time. The session did not go well to put it kindly. Cleaners old Charlie could handle, females in skirts he could not.
At the conference afterward we, the appraisers drawn from the operating world, tried to explain this to the HR types. The mere fact that old Charlie was highly effective in his environment, had no labor problems and produced high volumes of work cut no mustard. We noted that the appraisal scenario was artificial and bore no resemblance to the real world and it was unlikely that old Charlie would ever be faced with counseling a mini-skirted worker. However, this point, when pressed by us, raised the ugly specter that maybe WE weren’t with the system. The program, we were told, required these old-type supervisors and managers to be replaced with progressive types. That the replacements came in fresh from college with no practical knowledge was of no concern because they had been taught "management" and could manage anything. Well maybe.
Now the maintenance workforce is at least salted with females. They have proved their competence over and over and beaten down that area of resistance. The old Charlie’s of the world no longer stand there and wring their hats in the presence of a female. They have proven capable of adjusting too, if given the chance. The gals have ascended the ladder and I see their roles more and more as managers and directors. I have seen many changes in our industry and this is not one of the least.
