"We cannot ignore half of the population"

MONTREAL - Angela Gittens heads the airport council ACI. The aviation career of the American executive dates back to 1983 and includes CEO assignments in the boards of Atlanta and Miami airports. In aero.de`s "Women in Aviation" series Gittens shares her thoughts about female career opportunities in our industry.

aero.de: Ms. Gittens, you are a sociologist – how did you get into the aviation industry? 

Angela Gittens: As it turned out, sociology is the perfect background to have to run an airport. If you think about what sociology is, it is how individuals act as members of groups. At an airport you have under one roof many different companies that don’t work for the airport manager. 

 
The individuals work for different companies and organizations, you have government agencies, you have Airlines, you have service providers – all kind of entities. A large airport has certainly 140 different types of employees. 

As the airport manager who does not necessarily have direct control over all these entities, you have to understand all of their objectives, their business models and somehow make all this work, because it affects how successful you as airport operator are and how successful the other entities are.

Aero.de: Staying a bit with your background – as a sociologist, what do you think: why is there so few female workforce in the aviation business? 

Gittens: I think it eminates from where aviation started, which is basically the military. So with the growth of the airlines and the airports the workforce came out of the military for the most parts. 

And until 20/30 years ago airports were essentially run as just infrastructure for airplanes to take-off and land and for passengers to go through - they were businesses in their own right. 

And as actual personnel came from the military, the airline pilots from the most parts were from the military and the military was a traditional mail dominated field. Women did not particularly think of aviation as a field to go into as it was very male dominated. 

In fact today, airports are like a city. There are careers at an airport that mirror the opportunities that you would have in a medium sized city.

Aero.de: Do you have a global view of which kind of jobs women have at the airports? 

Gittens: They are in many of the fields, they tend to be more in the administration, in the marketing, communications fields, certainly in the service. Less so in operations although that’s changing. 

They are in the government agencies. It depends on the countries and what the profile is within the government agencies within the government and that is just mirrored at the airport.

Aero.de: You are talking about differences between countries – could you give us an overview about the differences you are perceiving concerning this issue in the different world regions? 

Gittens: That is changing. But this is an airport management view and not necessarily reflecting airlines or government agencies. At the airport side we see the highest prevalence of the hiring of female workforce at higher levels in north America. 

Less so in Latin America and in Europe. In Asia, because there is a lot of different countries and cultures some are better than others. Africa has a pretty descent component of females at various levels and in various occupations within the airport. So you see females in operations as well as in administration and in marketing.

Aero.de: You have joined the aviation industry in 1983 and since then a large and impressive trajectory in aviation. Which were your personal challenges you have faced being a woman within this mainly male dominated industry? 

Gittens: Well, in the US most of the airports are usually run by local governments. There tend to be fewer barriers in local government, they tend to be more open to diversity. So it was a little easier for me in the US than it might be for women in some other countries. 

Aero.de: Today you are the head of the biggest private entity concerning airports – which are your challenges today being a woman in this surrounding? 

Gittens: Well, I really haven’t seen any special challenges being a woman. Airports tend to be very open because they have to deal with people from all over the world in all kinds of conditions. 

So they tend to be less concerned about gender than perhaps some other industries. They respect my experience and what I bring and I really have not noticed any reservations in dealing with me.

Aero.de: You have already said that there have been changes regarding the representation of women since you have joined the industry in 1983. Could you go a bit more into detail? 

Gittens: Yes. I think because airports have become businesses instead of kind of an extension of a countries’ military presence, it has attracted and it has looked for civilians. 

So it seeks the civilian workforce and that workforce has more women in it and it has disciplines that they did not always have or they did not always focus on as a governmental or military enterprise. You have lawyers, you have marketing, you have communications, you have different kinds of administration. 

So they became a greater range of skills that airport managers were looking for to make their airports a successful enterprise. It was not just an airfield anymore, it was a business.

Aero.de: Looking at the aviation business as a whole: do you think it would be important to strengthen female representation? 

Gittens: Naturally! Passenger service demand is forecasted to double in 15 to 20 years. We cannot ignore half the population in trying to accommodate this demand, this is not going to work. 

There are not enough skilled people that we can recruit and retain. This business has grown up, the people that kind of made this business have retired or are going to be retired in ten years or so. So: who’s going to run these airports? (laughs) It’s that simple. 

Aero.de: That sounds a bit like women would be an emergency solution. But do you see any skills that women could contribute that are unique? 

Gittens: Well, I always find it hard to say that something is unique to a man or to a woman because these roles have been carved out during the years. I think in general that women tend to multitask better and I think when from a social point of view you have particularly complex situations women get less stressed from this. 

They can accept those kinds of complexities better than men. But those are stereotypes – they do not apply to every woman or every man. But just in general they tend to do better with uncertainty, let’s put it that way.

Aero.de: How could women be attracted to the industry? 

Gittens: Airports, manufacturers and Airlines have kind of different needs. But I think the key for all of us is getting the interest early. We need to get them into STEM. To achieve this you have to get them very early. 

Little girls tend to be pushed out of science, engineering and maths. There have been studies that show that in their early years they have been interested, but then over time they lose interest and then go into other fields. So the effort has to be made to target girls and keep them interested and motivated. 

And to do that you have to make sure that there are enough girls. Because a girl is not going to be willing to be in a situation where everyone else is a boy and acts like boys. Girls want to act like girls, not like smaller men. 

Aero.de: Do you have a message that you could send out to women who would like to join the aviation world in general and the airport as a workplace specifically? 

Gittens: I say there are lots of opportunities, this is a field with an extraordinary growth. Either it is at the airport level, the airline level, the manufacturing level, the governmental agencies level – you know, all these elements at the airport are going to be growing because there is growing demand. 

And you can come from many different disciplines. You can be a lawyer, you can be a sociologist, you can be an english major, you can be a marketing major, don’t think that you can do this only if you have been flying planes. 

We need engineers, we need maintenance people, there are computers at airports, there are mechanical systems at airports, there are electrical systems at airports. You could be from almost any field and have a career at the airport. 

Ms. Gittens, thank you very much for the interview.