As the world marks Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day in March, Air Cargo Vision asks Eliska Hill, Senior Vice President of Cargo at broker Air Partner about gender in the industry – and how it has changed over the years.
Thirty-five years ago, Eliska Hill wanted to be a pilot. Coming from an aviation family, it was only natural that she would want to follow in her relatives’ footsteps – or should that be wingtips?
Airline selection processes being what they are – many are called but few are chosen – that dream didn’t work out, but she was sufficiently bitten by the aviation bug to take a Transport Management course at Loughborough University in the UK.
Post-university, there came the small matter of finding an aviation job. “I started out in the industry working for MK Airlines, who were operating DC8’s into Africa at the time. I joined MK knowing very little about air cargo and, back in 1996, there were very few women in the industry,” she recalls. “It was a great introduction to the air cargo world – I learned everything from scratch.”
Being the only woman at an air cargo conference could be daunting, but it was an experience that made her stronger, says Hill.
“It’s hard now for those who didn’t experience it to envisage how male dominated air cargo was. Today, of course, things have changed immensely. However it’s still not quite where it should be, but nevertheless, it has evolved.”
Several factors have changed hearts and minds in the industry. One, Hill believes, was digitization. “Airfreight used to be seen as very hard, tough work with a lot of heavy lifting – literally. But that has changed.” Three decades ago, a woman working in the sector was expected to adapt to the then industry norms, “in the way I dressed, the way I spoke – in everything.”
But machines and computers are taking more and more of the strain – physical and mental – and that has opened up more doors for women. Digitization is even removing some of the 24/7 nature of air cargo, which again might make it somewhat more female-friendly, though Hill quickly points out that there are hundreds of women in the industry who do work shifts.
Technologically, the airfreight industry generally still has a great deal of work to do before it can say it has fully caught up with the passenger sector. (Hill herself has spent time outside cargo, in passenger charters, incidentally.)
“Even in 2015, I found that the amount paper involved in the industry was incredible.”
Perhaps because the industry has always been like that, people don’t see the need to change, but the growth of e-commerce with its need for speed and to closely track all consignments will surely change everything forever.
Hill, by the way, doesn’t buy the argument that airfreight is in some way unique or “too complex” to digitize effectively. “However, I think we are getting there slowly, although different regions, and countries are moving at different rates. Air cargo is a global industry, and at the moment we’re just not connected enough.”
Turning to the human aspect: “It’s also important that there are now more female role models at the top of the industry—leaders like Gabriela Hiitola (Senior VP, Finnair Cargo) and Kirsten de Bruijn at WestJet, who are strong role models at the pinnacle of their careers.”
Hill found a welcome shift away from traditional industry standards in a somewhat unexpected place—the Middle East. “I was general manager of Chapman Freeborn in Dubai in 2006 and then joined Emirates SkyCargo in 2015. I think it’s a misconception that Dubai is a male-dominated society. In reality, it is more culturally open than many other places, and there is a strong recognition of women’s contributions. Perhaps it’s because women there often have to work significantly harder to succeed, earning them a high level of respect in the industry.”
There are many other reasons why there are relatively few women in air cargo, some of them what might be termed involuntary rather than active discrimination. One is that the industry does tend to be a relatively closed shop. Once people find a place in it, they tend not to leave it again, and perhaps that militates against diversification of the workforce in many ways.
But really, the debate should not be about whether the freight industry should recruit more women but rather that it should recruit the best people of either gender to do a particular job. “Certainly, I would always recruit whoever was best for the particular role; you need a diverse workforce.” Arguments about whether women are better at multitasking, or that, for women, families and children will always come first are, frankly futile: “You shouldn’t be recruiting on the basis of a stereotype.”
We asked: what is next for women in the industry? “I think we need to do a lot more generally to get people thinking about logistics from an early age, at schools and colleges – there is a lot of work that needs to be done in that respect.”