Many people over the years have said to me that it must be much easier for me to gain employment as a pilot than my male counterparts on account of employment equity/affirmative action.  Ha, that’s a good one!

People have some insane idea that women, visible minorities, aboriginals and people with disabilities just have it really easy when it comes to getting employment. While I will admit that major airlines do not seem to discriminate, the path to getting on with a major airline is filled with road blocks.

It would be nice to be evaluated on the basis of your experience and character, but this doesn’t always happen when you fit into one of those minority groups.

I have witnessed blatant discrimination towards Muslims, black people and obviously women (myself included) on many occasions. The *few* employers conduct business this way each have their own preconceived notions about minority groups and why they wouldn’t fit in with the other employees. In the case of women; they are not physically strong enough and once a month they become too emotional to fly. What?!

I suppose companies don’t exactly advertise their discriminatory practices, but there is a list of companies that just don’t hire women.  I was determined to gain employment with one of these companies in particular; in retrospect, this was one of the worst ideas that I ever had.

Somehow I broke a barrier and managed to get an interview. Wow… I was a pioneer. During the interview, the subject of not hiring woman came up. The justification for this… wait for it… “women tend to use their ‘assets’ in order to climb the company ladder.” I was proud to announce that this was not at all my style, so I got the job. I was welcomed to the company with the following words (and I’m not even kidding a little bit) “don’t you go having babies now.” It was all downhill from there.

Another company I worked for was desperately seeking pilots. Basically if you had a pulse, you were hired. If you showed up in person, you would be hired on the spot. One person in particular, drove 16 hours in hopes of starting up his career with this company. Since he had bothered to do so, I automatically assumed that I would be working with him the next day. I asked management when he was starting. They said “well, he’s not…” I asked them why not. They said “well… uh… you know…” I said “what do you mean? He came all this way, he’s a great guy. You’ve hired everyone else that has walked through the door…” They continued “well… you know…” I said “I know what? You’re not hiring him because he’s black?!” They rolled their eyes, hung their heads a little and said “well… ya… you know…”

I’ve talked to some people who have an even harder time getting interviews. Those who send off their resumes and have a name like “Mohammed” or “Hussein” or something similarly offensive to the sensibilities of racist employers. These people often don’t even get calls for interviews. A Muslim friend of mine once told me that he wanted to change the name on his resume to “Ethan Tyler” or something of the likes in order to sound as white as possible. I can’t say I didn’t think of changing my first name to my first initial in order to de-feminize it. It’s sad that sometimes it has to come to that sometimes.

I witnessed an interview with a Muslim pilot who actually made it passed the name discrimination portion of the hiring process. I’d say that in a 45 minute interview, the employer spent 25 minutes talking about Ramadan and how this would negatively affect him in the performance of his work duties. Again, preconceived notions about certain groups taking precedence over their qualifications.

All of the above people were discriminated upon because of their so called “minority status” and this was made clear in each case by the employers. For the record, all of this has happened between 2000 and 2013, not 1930-1970.

So if you’re bitter that women and visible minorities are being interviewed for major airlines, don’t forget that the path that they took to that interview *may* have been a pretty winding one.