The Institute for Women Of Aviation Worldwide is delighted to announce that its flagship awareness week, Women Of Aviation Worldwide Week, is listed in the 2014 Edition of Chase’s Calendar of Events, the ultimate reference for special days, weeks, and months since 1957.
The technical workforce of air and space industry is composed mostly of males. Women occupy less than 12% of all technical posts in the industry. Some occupations such as pilots and aircraft mechanics are even more diversity challenged counting only 5% of pilots and 2% of aircraft mechanics as women.
Multiple studies have demonstrated that the fact men constitute an overwhelming majority of the workforce leads qualified female candidates to believe that the industry is not an option for them.
Women Of Aviation Worldwide Week, held annually during the week of March 8 – anniversary date of the first female pilot worldwide, addresses this perception issue and aims to foster diversity in aviation by celebrating history, raising awareness, and sparking vocations as thousands of girls and women are introduced to aviation through industry-wide collaboration.
The publisher of the Chase’s Calendar of Events, McGraw-Hill Education, receives thousands of entry submissions annually. Few meet the criteria, which include sustained observance and scope.
Thirty-seven countries on four continents took part of the Women Of Aviation Worldwide Week since it was established in 2011. Over the years, more than 80,000 girls and women have discovered that the air and space industry is for them too and more than 9,000 discovered flying in a small aircraft for the first time.
Each year, the week’s theme highlights women of aviation’s accomplishments at worldwide level. The theme for the 2014 Women Of Aviation Worldwide Week to be held from March 3 to 9 will be “Pushing the limits: 100 years of female aerobatic pilots and 50 years of women flying solo around the world”.
Brothers William D. Chase, a journalist and publisher from Michigan, and Harrison V. Chase, a university social scientist from Florida, founded Chase’s Calendar of Events in 1957. Today, it is the most comprehensive and authoritative reference available on special events, holidays, federal and state observances, historic anniversaries and more. Thousands of libraries across the country, broadcast and print media, activity directors, event planners, publicists, publishers, travel agents trust Chase’s to deliver interesting facts every day of the year.
The Institute for Women Of Aviation Worldwide (iWOAW) is a not-for-profit consortium of businesses and organizations from around the world whose mission is to foster diversity in the air and space industry through outreach, education, and advocacy.