Belgium has a nice role model for girls in aviation. Miss Belgium 2018 (Flor Pua) recently completed her ATPL training and is hoping to get an airline job on the A380 with Emirates
An interesting statistic from the Swedish CAA:
Out the total 2583 PPL holders, only 87 are women. However, out of 1178 CPL holders, 111 are women! More women in Sweden go into aviation commercially than privately!
https://www.transportstyrelsen.se/sv/luftfart/Statistik/Statistik-over-certifikat/
Having a model does really help for Military/Commercial recruitment, many girls who joined air forces in France were somehow inspired by Caroline Aigle achievements, I guess, the same applies to those after a commercial careers
In the other hand GA has less “women models” to inspire, the few cases I have seen so far in gliding/power, they were few female pilots that are partners of pilots or young daughters of pilots but I think this is also another thread where men discuss why women are not around in GA 
But, I think other women models are more placed to give inspiration (+ some scholarships will definitely help with financing)
Also, some GA circles have inclusion problem, I recently heard of an aerobatic instructor who did not want to teach a female pilot !!!
MedEwok wrote:
Generally this topic is closely related to “how do you get more girls into STEM courses and jobs?”
Seems to me as root-cause of the problem, but things are improving slowly so GA may get a positive benefit from it
Ibra wrote:
Seems to me as root-cause of the problem, but things are improving slowly so GA may get a positive benefit from it
I agree. To add another perspective to this, one could ask “how to get more boys to ride horses?” or “how to get more boys to become a nurse?” etc.
I’m fairly certain the root problem is the same, ingrained prejudices, lack of role models (and for jobs certainly lack of pay and career options for typical "women’s jobs)
Besides Caroline Aigle, France also has another prominent female role model for pilots, Virginie Guyot – the only woman in the world who served as a leader of a military aerobatic display team, Patrouille de France.
To anyone who’s raised children, it is obvious to see that there are gender differences and spheres of interest that are not a product of your upbringing. That we’re born with or somehow came into this world with. Nobody would suggest that being gay was related to your upbringing, it is obvious you were born that way and was pre-formed in that regard. Nobody would suggest that two identical twins brought up in the exact same household under the same circumstances would have identical personalities. No, they would of course be different because they were born with those differences already in place.
So why do we then suggest that interests should follow a different path? That all that matters in that regard is upbringing and completely disregard predisposition? In short, I’m convinced that women are simply genetically not as interested in the same things as men are, and vice versa. It doesn’t matter how much we try to change the fact with education, gender roles, inclusion programs, female mentors etc. Yes, it can affect a few, but it’s not going to get us to 50% of women in pilot ranks. Never – the interest simply isn’t there to the same degree as in men and nothing will change that.
Case in point: Just look at the female pilot population numbers in the world. They’re pretty much constant at around 4-6% worldwide. So, they’re 4-6% in Kenya, where the barriers for women are almost insurmountable for them to become pilots. Yet, here in the west, where it would be very easy for a woman to become a pilot and where it’s encouraged, you still only see 4-6% women! Shouldn’t there be much more than that when you remove the barriers if it were just obstacles? No, because the interest isn’t there.
+1 for Adam here.
One of the things which comes through is that if you research certain topics, you need to be careful what you conclude, if you want to get the next research grant 
Peter, you can interpret that either way. As a professor in a Russell group university, I prefer the less cynical one!
Mark
As usual, in any nature vs nurture debate the truth is somewhere in betwen. But one thing is certain – even if girls are “naturally” drawn to other things than boys, the very low percentage of woman pilots, engineers, etc is too far off what could ever be “just natural”. That much is obvious from the differnt subject choices girls make in all-girl schools vs in coed environments (where fhey conform much more to stereotype)
