Women in Aviation International’s twelfth Girls in Aviation Day falls on 19 September. About 200 events are planned at airports, FBOs, museums and hangars across 27 countries in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Organisers expect more than 34,500 people. The first year, in 2015, drew 3,200 at 32 sites. A hangar visit, a tailwheel build and a conversation with a woman who flies or fixes aeroplanes can change a Saturday. It does not change a roster. Aviation has become fluent at counting girls who walk through a gate. It is still clumsy at counting how many stay, get type-rated, get promoted, get paid equally, or leave after the first child, the first night duty or the first unpaid training invoice.
The global picture is stubborn. IATA’s 25by2025 reporting put women at 41.6 percent of the counted aviation workforce in 2024, and 48.1 percent in Asia-Pacific, the highest regional share. Cabin crew still carry most of that. Women held 31.4 percent of senior roles among reporting signatories and about 23 percent of technical jobs. Flight-deck representation worldwide remains near 6 percent, even after a rise of more than a third since 2021. ICAO-era figures put women at roughly a quarter of air-traffic controllers, under a fifth of dispatchers and under a tenth of aerospace engineers. Those are the jobs that keep aircraft legal, not the jobs that fill a photograph on recruitment day.
India is the exception that proves the retention problem. The government told Parliament that women are about 15 percent of commercial pilots, three times the usual global figure. Licences issued to women rose from 243 in 2021 to 461 in 2025. India had 3,327 active women pilots at the end of 2025. In the first half of 2026 women took 348 of 1331 new commercial licences, more than one in four. IndiGo says more than 1000 of its pilots are women, 17.5 percent of the deck, and women are over 45 percent of the whole company, including 23 percent of leadership posts and about 30 percent of airport operations. Air India puts women at 16 percent of pilots and 84 percent of cabin crew. The civil aviation minister has talked of 25 percent across the wider workforce. That is cockpit progress. It is not yet an engineering or ATC story. Public data on women aircraft maintenance engineers, controllers, dispatchers and MRO supervisors in India remain thin. Cabin and cockpit numbers travel. Hangar and tower numbers do not.
The barriers after Girls in Aviation Day are ordinary and expensive. A commercial licence and a type rating still cost more than many families outside a metro can finance. Mentors cluster in the same few airlines. Rosters punish anyone who cannot work nights and weekends without a second adult at home. Parental leave and return-to-line policies exist on paper more often than they exist in crew planning. Harassment reporting still collides with a small industry in which the next simulator slot and the next command upgrade come with the same people. Scholarships that only reach English-medium students in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru will not fill India’s next thousand aircraft. Airlines, airports, MROs and flying schools that want credit for Saturday should publish the Monday numbers. Share of women among new hires, type-rating completions, command upgrades, AME licences, ATC validations and department heads. Attrition by year five. Pay bands by licence and seat. How many scholarship holders were not already inside an aviation family. Outreach is a day. A career is a decade of rostering, money and culture. Saturday will look full. The industry should be asked what Monday looks like for the same girls in 2031.