Zero Discrimination and International Women's Days

As Zero Discrimination Day (1 March) and International Women’s Day (8 March) approach, I’ve been thinking about how often discrimination doesn’t show up as overt hostility, but as something quieter — being subtly othered. Not quite fitting the expected mould. Not quite who people picture when they think of a role, a profession, or a space.

The Venn diagram here captures a simple but telling truth beautifully illustrated by my two professions: most pilots are male, most psychologists are female — and those who sit outside those norms often end up doing extra, invisible work just to belong. Extra explaining. Extra vigilance. Extra self-monitoring. Not because they lack ability, but because difference is still treated as deviation.

Sometimes discrimination isn’t about being excluded from a group at all. It’s about the constant friction of being the exception. The female pilot that male ground staff walk past looking for “the pilot”. The male midwife greeted with a look of horror in the labour ward. The female engineer whose uniform doesn’t have pockets.

What’s striking is that this kind of everyday difference carries real weight. Research shows that repeated exposure to microaggressions and subtle discrimination is associated with chronic stress responses and increased systemic inflammation over time. What we experience socially doesn’t stay neatly contained in our thoughts or feelings — it accumulates in the body. Discrimination creates load, even when it’s dismissed as minor or unintentional.

Thinking about difference through overlap rather than opposition helps here. Many people move through spaces where they are part of the majority — until suddenly they’re not. Gender, race, ethnicity, neurodiversity, background, lifestyle, even interests can all become reasons someone is quietly marked as “other”, depending on the context.

This short set of blogs explores those overlaps. One piece looks at being woman in the male-dominated profession I love. One sits in the centre, focusing on allyship — and why reducing everyday discrimination isn’t about being nice, but about reducing unnecessary psychological and physiological strain. The third looks at the other profession I love, where the gender balance runs the other way, and asks similar questions about who is assumed to belong.

Zero discrimination isn’t about erasing difference. It’s about removing the friction that makes difference harder than it needs to be.

1. Most pilots are male

Most pilots are male. That fact is often presented as a neutral statistic — an observation rather than a problem. But numbers don’t sit quietly. They shape cultures, expectations, and judgements in ways that are easy to miss if you belong to the majority, and exhausting if you don’t.

In the UK, women make up only around 6–7% of pilots, with representation dropping further at senior levels such as captains, examiners, and training roles. That imbalance is not simply about who enters aviation; it’s about who sets the informal norms of competence, confidence, and credibility.

Aviation is not unique in this respect. Orthopaedic surgery — another highly skilled, technically demanding profession — shows a similar pattern. In the United States, women account for only around 7% of practising orthopaedic surgeons, despite women now forming half or more of medical graduates overall. In technical trades such as aircraft maintenance or automotive mechanics, female representation is often lower still, frequently sitting in single digits.

What these professions share is not just a gender gap, but a default. When most people in a role look the same, sound the same, and learned the job in similar ways, that group quietly becomes the reference point for what “normal” looks like.

In pilot training, this matters. Early-stage learning variability is universal — no two trainees develop skills in exactly the same way or at the same pace. But when the default trainee is male, deviations from that norm can be interpreted less generously. Feedback may feel more personal. Errors may attract more scrutiny. Confidence is assessed not only on performance, but on how closely someone matches an unspoken template of how a pilot is supposed to be.

This is rarely about overt discrimination. No one has to say “you don’t belong here.” The friction comes from being the exception — from navigating a system that wasn’t designed with you in mind, while still being held to its standards.

Research by Durbin et al. (2022) for the Royal Aeronautical Society highlights how these dynamics compound over time. The lack of visible female role models, entrenched old-boys-network effects, and cultural assumptions about authority and technical mastery all contribute to why so few women progress into senior and training roles. Even where assessment criteria are objective, the experience of being assessed is not always neutral.

This is why International Women’s Day and Zero Discrimination Day matter in aviation — not because flying should make allowances, but because talent develops best when it doesn’t have to fight unnecessary headwinds. Discrimination is not only about exclusion; it’s about the cumulative cognitive load of being noticed, judged, and remembered differently.

The encouraging truth is that cultures can change. Training environments can become more reflective, more aware, and more equitable without lowering standards. Representation matters not as symbolism, but because it reshapes what “normal” looks like — and when normal expands, learning becomes safer, fairer, and more effective for everyone.

Aviation has evolved before. It can do so again.

2. The friction of being the exception

Sometimes discrimination isn’t about exclusion from a group, but about the constant friction of being the exception.

When you sit outside the perceived norm — whether because of gender, race, neurodiversity, background, accent, lifestyle, or simply not fitting the expected mould — everyday life carries an added cognitive load. You monitor how you’re perceived. You adapt your behaviour. You second-guess feedback. You expend quiet effort just to be read as competent, safe, or “good enough.”

This is how discrimination often shows up in modern professional environments: not as overt hostility, but as microaggressions, subtle assumptions, and uneven tolerance for normal learning curves. Being “other” means mistakes are noticed more, variance is interpreted differently, and feedback can feel more personal than developmental. None of this is dramatic in isolation — but cumulatively, it matters.

What’s striking is how invisible this experience can be to those who don’t carry it. When a system works smoothly for you, it’s easy to believe it’s neutral. Comfort within a system often goes unnoticed by those who have it — and is painfully obvious to those who don’t. Some people get to be “just learning”; others are perceived as struggling. Some are granted time to grow; others feel pressure to prove they belong from day one.

This is where allyship quietly lives — not in grand gestures, but in noticing. Noticing whose experience is treated as standard. Noticing who adapts, and who doesn’t have to. Noticing how informal norms, training cultures, and feedback styles can either distribute effort fairly or place it disproportionately on those who already stand out.

Aviation provides a clear case study, but the same dynamics surface across many professions. The challenge — and the opportunity — lies not only in increasing representation, but in recognising how systems shape everyday experience. Reducing discrimination isn’t about erasing difference; it’s about reducing the extra work difference so often demands.

Aviation is simply one place where these dynamics are easy to see — not the only place they exist.

3. Most Psychologists Are Female

As a woman, most of my life is spent navigating environments where I am, in one way or another, “other”. That is true in aviation, but it extends well beyond the workplace. It shows up in ordinary, everyday situations — dealing with tradespeople, managing practical tasks, making decisions that require technical knowledge, or simply being taken seriously in routine interactions. These moments are rarely dramatic. They accumulate, creating a steady background of adjustment and vigilance. Alongside this sits the constant work of managing gendered expectations around competence, authority, confidence and emotional tone.

The notable exception is my work as a psychologist.

Psychology is a predominantly female profession, particularly in counselling, clinical and health psychology. In this space, the characteristics that often mark women as “other” elsewhere — emotional attunement, relational awareness, reflective communication — are not only normal, they are expected. Here, I am not unusual. I am not subtly questioned, explained to, or assumed to be less technically competent. I am treated as the default. I simply belong.

That contrast is striking.

It highlights how rarely many women experience professional environments where they do not have to adapt, soften, justify or prove themselves before they can get on with the work. It also illustrates an uncomfortable truth: discrimination does not only arise where women are under-represented. It can also emerge within female-dominated professions, shaping who is seen as authoritative, credible, or legitimate when someone does not fit the expected profile — whether that difference relates to gender, sexuality, neurodivergence, background, or life experience.

What this makes clear is that discrimination is not only about exclusion from a group. It is about who gets to be seen as the norm. Who is granted the benefit of being “just another professional”, and who is quietly required to do extra work - overcoming friction - simply to be perceived as competent.

“As International Women’s Day approaches, it’s worth reflecting on how powerful — and how unevenly distributed — the simple experience of belonging really is.”