Looking through the MOD Sponsored Cadet Forces Statistics, April 2022,
it seems that the best organisation for encouraging ladies to join is the Sea Cadets and susequently that higher proportion follows across to the Sea Cadet Adult Volunteers.
What can we in the Air Cadets do to encourage more girls to join?
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56% of women progress to university according to these stats. So many will be less likely to stay on post 18/sixth form. That will go a long way to account for the differences. How to encourage them to stay⌠dunno!
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Do we need to be encouraging people to stay? How many of our current adult staff are in their position having not left from being a cadet?
We can look at that angle, but a better angle is how do we appeal to those in their 30s and 40s to come join us and bring their life experience (and therefore possibly require less training)?
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Interesting and very valid point.
We do have an issue with uni/ higher ed students in that:
- they canât join as cadets as undergrads as they are too old
- they canât join as staff as they are too young or will be in their final year, so mightnât have time (with exceptions for those on 4 year courses I guess)
- Bader doesnât allow supernumerary cadets to access cadet portal in their âtermtimeâ squadron so itâs harder to keep students engaged
- we donât recognise UAS O/Cdts in the way the ACF does OTC O/Cdts, where they can act as CFAV to a greater extent
Appreciate none of these points are directly related to male/female ratios however
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Some sort of help with childcare would make a big difference but no idea how or if that can be done.
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That would help me immensely.
Gender rations are silly. We should do whatever we can to attract more people in general but at the end of the day each gender is equal, neither is specifically better or worse and in the end they will join if they want to its more about providing the opportunity for them and for the types of roles they would like to do.
Same with gender splits by job type.
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^^ Thatâs closer to what weâre discussing
Something Iâve been involved with (and thereâs some official work ongoing) is the question of why fewer girls than expected apply for flying and gliding. A female VGS instructor is the lead on this. This follows through into very few at ACPS and SGS, too, and/or those who do get the courses not performing as well as expected.
the chance to get any cadet on an ACPS or GS would be nice
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Well, your RAvnO will have sent out a calling notice by now⌠so if youâve not had it, badger the WAvnO.
can you better define this question?
fewer girls than the boys? (easy there are less of them)
or
fewer girls applying as a %? (ie 30% of the Cadet population are girls yet only 15% of flying and gliding applications are from girls?)
Iâve been involved with this too - itâs proportional to the number that should be expected by age and gender. So actual expectation rather than assuming itâs 50/50
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Exactly. We arenât attempting to solve the problem of the cadet population but itâs still striking that even of the smaller number of girls, not enough are asking for flying and itâs all the way from first gliding sortie to ACPS.
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So what do people think would encourage more female cadets to get involved. Especially to get involved with aerospace and aviation more?
Does it really matter? Well except outside something for statisticians to do.
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Yes. It matters to anyone who isnât a complete chump. Making our organisation more attractive to people is a) ensuring our future and b) the right thing to do.
If there is a barrier to female participation we should look to see if we can remove it or at least reduce it.
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The problem here is that when looking at these two quotes side by side with the context of what the second is in response to, it appears that in your head the first only applies to male cadetsâŚ
If we fail to encourage all of our members to take up as broad a range of activities and experiences as possible then we are not as you say âfocusing on delivering a decent experienceâ.
So (and feel free to correct me if Iâm wrong) not only do you not care about mental health, you also donât care about the experience of female cadets.
âŚitâs been 2 daysâŚ
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Whenever I ask for volunteers for flying I never get many female hands go up. When I ask why they donât want to go, they reply that theyâre not bothered by flying.
And yet, the squadron band and first aid team are approximately 75% female.
It simply boils down to âhorses for coursesâ. You either like an activity or not.
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That doesnât answer âwhyâ thoughâŚ