Reduced Inequalities

In celebration of Women’s History Month, last week JetBlue’s Women in Flight crewmember resource group, in partnership with the airline’s diversity & inclusion teams and the JetBlue Foundation, hosted its signature Fly Like a Girl event, bringing aspiring and youth from local organizations to JetBlue’s Hangar at New York’s JFK Airport. For the fourth year in a row, participants heard what it’s like to run an airline from female crewmembers representing careers below the wing, above the wing and everywhere in between.

At the event, the attendees participated in sessions throughout the day which included a crewmember Q&A, an airplane engine “show and tell,” and an opportunity to board an aircraft and sit in the Captain’s seat and a meet-and-greet with women pilots and inflight crewmembers.

This year, the conversation around diversity has been amplified. While progress is being made in the area of diversity and inclusion (D&I) from Hollywood to the C-suite, company diversity report releases alone won’t move the needle in our communities. Conversation – and action – need to take place every day.

Frontier Co-op is a $100,000 Fund partner responsible to people and planet and has been supporting Whole Planet Foundation's mission of global poverty alleviation through microcredit since 2012.

Nearly half of India’s 1.3 billion people are women. Yet women comprise only one-third of HP employees in India—and just 15 percent are managers. When HP’s Nanditha Seetharamaiah learned about this inequality, she decided to do something about it.

Happy Pi Day! Pi Day is celebrated on 3/14 around the world. Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.141592. Pi has been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its decimal point.

Today is a celebration of math and continuous measurement and movement. In honor of Women’s History Month, we sat down with three JetBlue crewmembers in math and technology-related careers who keep our airline moving non-stop. From figuring out JetBlue’s flight times and IT problem solving to buying airplanes, these women help fuel the airline.

Despite the substantial, positive contribution to growth and innovation made by women, disparities still exist in access to education and economic opportunities that limit women from achieving their full sociopolitical power.

In my role at JetBlue, I see firsthand how important science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are to shaping future generations of leaders. Most of the critical functions of JetBlue require STEM, including aircraft flight, repair, and routing.

Yet the aviation industry still lacks women in technical and analytical positions, a trend that is seen throughout the aviation sector. Women pilots, for instance, represent less than 7% of the commercial pilot population, and women represent less than 3% of all mechanics, according to 2015 data from the Federal Aviation Administration.