They all said no.
In 1971, National Airlines released an advertisement featuring a real flight attendant and a new slogan: “Fly Me”. The campaign soon included Jo, Denise, and Laura, and attempted to sell the stewardesses as sex objects. This campaign was successful, as ticket sales increased by 19%. Other airlines followed suit, and flight attendants were degraded and discriminated against in the workplace.
In response, flight attendants united and pushed back against the discrimination. This was a major milestone for working women in the United States, as it was one of the first groups to fight workplace discrimination.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, becoming a flight attendant (known as a stewardess at the time) was one of the most sought-after jobs for women. This was due to the glamourous image of air travel that airlines were selling. To ensure that the stewardesses matched this image, airlines had strict hiring practices. These included age limits, height and weight requirements, and a requirement to be single and white.
The fight to take down these industry standards began with black women like Patricia Banks, who became the first black flight attendant on a commercial aircraft in 1960. Patricia was the only black student at Grace Downs Air Career School, and after completing the program, she was rejected from TWA, Mohawk, and Capital (which later merged with United). Patricia never heard back from Capital Airlines and the chief stewardess told her that they did not hire black people. Patricia filed a case with the New York State Commission Against Discrimination to investigate the airline for its racist hiring practices. She faced many threats during the process, but she felt it was something she had to do. The commission decided that the airline had discriminated against her and ordered them to reverse their policy and hire her. In 1960, Patricia became one of the first black commercial flight attendants.
A few years later, the Civil Rights Act became federal law and employment discrimination on the basis of race and sex was prohibited under Title VII of the act. More black women began to challenge airlines for the racism they experienced in the industry and used the rulings to challenge airline policies with the help of their union. In 1965, Betty Green Bateman was fired after Braniff Airlines discovered she was married. After months of fighting with the airline, she was allowed to keep her job and the lawsuit forced multiple airlines to overturn their marriage rules.
At the same time, the airlines were trying to make money off of implying that flight attendants were readily available in all sorts of ways. This was not acceptable to the women in the industry, so with the Women’s Liberation Movement, they put pressure on the airlines to change their policies. Eventually, the airlines had to comply and the sexy stewardess stereotype was no more. We’ve got to do something. And they did. Stewardesses started some of the first independent, women-led unions in US history. They also formed groups like Stewardesses for Women’s Rights and tackled age restrictions, marriage policies, uniforms, and weight limits. Though much of the mainstream movement focused on white women at the time, black stewardesses were fighting racist appearance standards in the industry, too. Like one United stewardess who was fired for wearing her hair in an Afro, she successfully sued and forced the airline to apply its regulation equally without regard to race. Many other policies would take decades to overturn, including regulations that grounded attendants when they became pregnant or weight restrictions, which in one case took a 17 year long legal battle against American Airlines to finally undo.
As restrictions changed, so did the makeup of the industry. Older, married, and black stewardesses increasingly joined the profession. The legal fights had altered the airline industry…and taken together, they would also alter the future of women’s labor in the US. The rights that these women won have become case law about sex discrimination in employment. The stewardess cases have been used in gender discrimination cases in some LGBTQ cases…But that all built on a basis of stewardess cases, their efforts. Which, you know, were back in the 1960s and 70s still have in effect today.
Those of us that lived in earlier decades were seeking the best possible reality for us. I don’t think we could ever go back to the way it was. The history of what happened, frankly it was never, ever talked about. But it was a beginning.
Thanks so much for watching. My name is Halley, I’m the producer of this episode of Missing Chapter. So much research and reporting went into this episode and one fact that we didn’t get to share is that when no-marriage policies were rampant in the airline industry…it’s estimated that up to 30% of stewardesses were secretly married. Just another one of the many ways that they challenged sex discrimination at work.
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