Viewing page 5 of 140

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

officers (co-pilots), and by the summer of 1977 one had been promoted to captain.

These achievements by women in aviation today did not come about overnight. They are based on several decades of struggle and determination on the part of many courageous women, the roots of which go back to the very beginning of aviation in the U.S.

Women's fight for acceptance in traditionally all-male pursuits was a familiar fight to the U.S. women pilots in those early days of the twentieth century. Yet aviation was not "traditionally" all-male. In Europe as far back as 1834 there were twenty-two women who had piloted balloons. As the field of aviation developed into heavier-than-air craft, why shouldn't it follow that women, having been so active in the lighter-than-air era, be just as active in the airplane era?

Claude Grahame-White, a famous early British aviator, was among the many people to whom this premise did not logically follow. He actually stated that he regretted having taught women to fly because he felt he had pushed them toward an

Transcription Notes:
"not" is underlined (in the middle of the page).