As an autistic adult, the feeling of being an outlier in the room is entirely normal for me. Only recently diagnosed neurodiverse, I now realize that many people, while they may not initially feel comfortable in a social or professional gathering, quickly adjust to ‘fit in’.

But the paradigm may be different for women in aviation. Last month I attended AeroWomen 2024, the fourth annual edition of a conference organized and hosted by Leonardo UK. Taking my seat alongside Mavis Amadi, an extraordinarily humble and very senior engineer, I was immediately shocked by overheard snippets of conversation. The difficulty of being the only woman in a room full of men in aviation was a recurrent theme.

The keynote tackled it head-on, with Dr Tessa Morris-Paterson receiving a depressingly good show of hands when she asked how many delegates had been praised as having done something ‘well for a girl’, she then pleaded for that mindset to stop.

Folayo Osekita, chief of staff to the chair and CEO of Leonardo UK, thanked the conference organizers for including men — AeroMen, he quipped — in the conversation, then showed a video of his three-year old daughter playing with a toy airplane while his one-year old son watched.

“My daughter doesn’t have a clue about inclusivity. We’re talking about it here because something happens between when you are a child and the time when others begin setting boundaries you didn’t set for yourself,” he said.

My son and daughter deserve the opportunity to grow up in a world where they have an equal chance of pursuing their dreams. When I see them working together at a puzzle, or him trying to emulate his sister, I believe I have the very best right there, in my family. If we could capture that spirit at work, of teamwork, playing to our strengths, collaborating to achieve our goals, respecting and valuing differences, how much stronger would society be?

Krystina Pearson-Rampeearee, a BAE Systems engineering team lead and STEM ambassador, and Gareth Beck, divisional director for Morson Projects Marine, Aerospace and Defence, also delivered powerful messages.

In a voice still broken from a Taylor Swift concert, Pearson-Rampeearee explained how motherhood had emboldened her to become a better version of herself, while Beck spoke with passion and humility on nurturing future talent and allyship.

The panel discussion, chaired by Helen Haxell, external communications manager Leonardo Helicopters UK and featuring an engineer, a project officer, a director and an air traffic controller, provided profound insight.

With only their gender in common, all five women spoke of the perennial difficulty of being the only woman in the room. A recurring theme in their inspiring and very different career paths, it ought not to have been a theme at all.

Most of the delegates, speakers and panelists at AeroWomen 2024 were professional women, their position in the workplace defined by their skillset. Yet they were accustomed to feeling out of place, uncomfortable because of their gender in a male-dominated industry.

I struggle in social and professional environments through differences in mental processing, a disability if you will, that places me in a small minority. I felt a kinship with these women. Being female is neither a disability nor a minority but women are still fighting for equal rights around the world.

We have far to go before we achieve equality. The time when an engineer walks into a room and is noticed first for her ability and second for her gender still seems too far away.

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Featured image credited to JoJo Cockerell/Leonardo UK