Author : Georgia Panter Nielsen
Publisher :
Page : 190 pages
File Size : 32,20 MB
Release : 1982
Category : Flight attendants
ISBN :
Review of the historical evolution of working conditions, labour relations and the trade unionization of flight attendants (woman workers) in the USA - examines sex discrimination related to marital status and pregnancy; discusses attitudes of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) trade union; comments on relevant jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. Photographs and references.
Author : Kathleen Barry
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 47,50 MB
Release : 2007-02-28
Category : History
ISBN : 0822389509
“In her new chic outfit, she looks like anything but a stewardess working. But work she does. Hard, too. And you hardly know it.” So read the text of a 1969 newspaper advertisement for Delta Airlines featuring a picture of a brightly smiling blond stewardess striding confidently down the aisle of an airplane cabin to deliver a meal. From the moment the first stewardesses took flight in 1930, flight attendants became glamorous icons of femininity. For decades, airlines hired only young, attractive, unmarried white women. They marketed passenger service aloft as an essentially feminine exercise in exuding charm, looking fabulous, and providing comfort. The actual work that flight attendants did—ensuring passenger safety, assuaging fears, serving food and drinks, all while conforming to airlines’ strict rules about appearance—was supposed to appear effortless; the better that stewardesses performed by airline standards, the more hidden were their skills and labor. Yet today flight attendants are acknowledged safety experts; they have their own unions. Gone are the no-marriage rules, the mandates to retire by thirty-two. In Femininity in Flight, Kathleen M. Barry tells the history of flight attendants, tracing the evolution of their glamorized image as ideal women and their activism as trade unionists and feminists. Barry argues that largely because their glamour obscured their labor, flight attendants unionized in the late 1940s and 1950s to demand recognition and respect as workers and self-styled professionals. In the 1960s and 1970s, flight attendants were one of the first groups to take advantage of new laws prohibiting sex discrimination. Their challenges to airlines’ restrictive employment policies and exploitive marketing practices (involving skimpy uniforms and provocative slogans such as “fly me”) made them high-profile critics of the cultural mystification and economic devaluing of “women’s work.” Barry combines attention to the political economy and technology of the airline industry with perceptive readings of popular culture, newspapers, industry publications, and first-person accounts. In so doing, she provides a potent mix of social and cultural history and a major contribution to the history of women’s work and working women’s activism.
Author : Casey Grant
Publisher :
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 30,39 MB
Release : 2014-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9781600475450
"In all of the stories about aviation and its history, the stories of the first African American stewardesses have been left untold and unknown. We first took to the skies when flying was glamorous and exclusive, when little girls dreamt of being stewardesses, models, or movie stars. We rubbed elbows with the elite and traveled the world when few others could. We flew as pioneers in a global society long before the times of the Internet and globalizaiton. We also kept our heads high, facing down racial prejudice and discrimination. We lived as stars of the sky. I was one of the first African American stewardesses for Delta Air Lines, and I worked alongside other pioneers for almost thrity-five years as co-adventureres and friends. This book tells my story and theirs."--Author's notes.
Author : Bruce McAllister
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 42,57 MB
Release : 2012
Category : Flight attendants
ISBN : 9780615539379
Offering historical images, documents, and firsthand experiences, covers the history of flight attendants from the earliest days of air travel to the present day.
Author : Kathleen Barry
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 34,98 MB
Release : 2007-02-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9780822339465
'Femininity in Flight' considers flight attendants as cultural icons, looking at how attendants redeployed the 'glamourization' used to sell air travel to campaign for professional respect, higher wages, and women's rights.
Author : Dorothy Sue Cobble
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 50,18 MB
Release : 2011-08-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1400840864
American feminism has always been about more than the struggle for individual rights and equal treatment with men. There's also a vital and continuing tradition of women's reform that sought social as well as individual rights and argued for the dismantling of the masculine standard. In this much anticipated book, Dorothy Sue Cobble retrieves the forgotten feminism of the previous generations of working women, illuminating the ideas that inspired them and the reforms they secured from employers and the state. This socially and ethnically diverse movement for change emerged first from union halls and factory floors and spread to the "pink collar" domain of telephone operators, secretaries, and airline hostesses. From the 1930s to the 1980s, these women pursued answers to problems that are increasingly pressing today: how to balance work and family and how to address the growing economic inequalities that confront us. The Other Women's Movement traces their impact from the 1940s into the feminist movement of the present. The labor reformers whose stories are told in The Other Women's Movement wanted equality and "special benefits," and they did not see the two as incompatible. They argued that gender differences must be accommodated and that "equality" could not always be achieved by applying an identical standard of treatment to men and women. The reform agenda they championed--an end to unfair sex discrimination, just compensation for their waged labor, and the right to care for their families and communities--launched a revolution in employment practices that carries on today. Unique in its range and perspective, this is the first book to link the continuous tradition of social feminism to the leadership of labor women within that movement.
Author : Deborah G. Douglas
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Page : 557 pages
File Size : 25,8 MB
Release : 2021-05-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0813182697
“Individual women’s stories enliven almost every page” of this comprehensive illustrated reference, now updated, from the National Air and Space Museum (Technology and Culture). Women run wind tunnel experiments, direct air traffic, and fabricate airplanes. American women have been involved with flight from the beginning. But until 1940, most people believed women could not fly, that Amelia Earhart was an exception to the rule. World War II changed everything. “It is on the record that women can fly as well as men,” stated General Henry H. Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces. Then the question became “Should women fly?” Deborah G. Douglas tells the story of this ongoing debate and its impact on American history. From Jackie Cochran, whose perseverance led to the formation of the Women’s Army Service Pilots (WASP) during World War II to the more recent achievements of Jeannie Flynn, the Air Force’s first woman fighter pilot and Eileen Collins, NASA’s first woman shuttle commander, Douglas introduces a host of determined women who overcame prejudice and became military fliers, airline pilots, and air and space engineers. Not forgotten are stories of flight attendants, air traffic controllers, and mechanics. American Women and Flight since 1940 is a revised and expanded edition of a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum reference work. Long considered the single best reference work in the field, this new edition contains extensive new illustrations and a comprehensive bibliography.
Author : Rosemary Griggs
Publisher : Fence Books
Page : 76 pages
File Size : 11,21 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN :
Sky Girl takes up the airborne commedia in a new atmosphere of revised service, revised glamour, and revised terror. From far and quite, quite near, the poems of Rosemary Griggs observe with a kind but unsettling gaze the trials of the flight attendant, post-disaster. Our girl Kimberlie jets to parts known and unknown- Saginaw, Phuket, Isoka, Maui, a weekend getaway, a layover, the great blue yonder- inspiring affection and sympathetic fear and loneliness wherever she goes. These are poems as varied and exploratory, and deeply humane, as any job description can be.
Author : Drew Whitelegg
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 32,45 MB
Release : 2007-06-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0814794734
Get ready for takeoff. The life of the flight attendant, a.k.a., stewardess, was supposedly once one of glamour, exotic travel and sexual freedom, as recently depicted in such films as Catch Me If You Can and View From the Top. The nostalgia for the beautiful, carefree and ever helpful stewardess perhaps reveals a yearning for simpler times, but nonetheless does not square with the difficult, demanding and sometimes dangerous job of today's flight attendants. Based on interviews with over sixty flight attendants, both female and male labor leaders, and and drawing upon his observations while flying across the country and overseas, Drew Whitelegg reveals a much more complicated profession, one that in many ways is the quintessential job of the modern age where life moves at record speeds and all that is solid seems up in the air. Containing lively portraits of flight attendants, both current and retired, this book is the first to show the intimate, illuminating, funny, and sometimes dangerous behind-the-scenes stories of daily life for the flight attendant. Going behind the curtain, Whitelegg ventures into first-class, coach, the cabin, and life on call for these men and women who spend week in and week out in foreign cities, sleeping in hotel rooms miles from home. Working the Skies also elucidates the contemporary work and labor issues that confront the modern worker: the demands of full-time work and parenthood; the downsizing of corporate America and the resulting labor lockouts; decreasing wages and hours worked; job insecurity; and the emotional toll of a high stress job. Given the events of 9/11, flight attendants now have an especially poignant set of stressful concerns to manage, both for their own safety as well as for those they serve, the passengers. Flight attendants, originally registered nurses charged with attending to passengers' medical needs, now find themselves wearing the hats of therapist, security guard and undercover agent. This last set of tasks pushing some, as Whitelegg shows, out of the business altogether.
Author : Phil Tiemeyer
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 36,32 MB
Release : 2013-03-12
Category : History
ISBN : 0520274768
In this vibrant new history, Phil Tiemeyer details the history of men working as flight attendants. Beginning with the founding of the profession in the late 1920s and continuing into the post-September 11 era, Plane Queer examines the history of men who joined workplaces customarily identified as female-oriented. It examines the various hardships these men faced at work, paying particular attention to the conflation of gender-based, sexuality-based, and AIDS-based discrimination. Tiemeyer also examines how this heavily gay-identified group of workers created an important place for gay men to come out, garner acceptance from their fellow workers, fight homophobia and AIDS phobia, and advocate for LGBT civil rights. All the while, male flight attendants facilitated key breakthroughs in gender-based civil rights law, including an important expansion of the ways that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would protect workers from sex discrimination. Throughout their history, men working as flight attendants helped evolve an industry often identified with American adventuring, technological innovation, and economic power into a queer space.
