Flying High in The Shadows: Women Air Force Service Pilots in WWII

Abstract

This paper explores the gender discrimination that the Women Air Force Service Pilots, or WASPs, faced during their service World War II and the reasons for the thirty-year secrecy of the program. The research discussed in this paper is important to the fields of women's gender history, specifically in its significance to military history by relaying female narratives stories that have been neglected. Recent historiography about the women has been limited because of WASP's records classification due to WWII military procedures but has slowly increased though recent news articles, oral interviews, and autobiographies that focus on the life of a particular WASP. 111is paper examines the various noncombatant piloting tasks the WASPs completed during World War II to help the wartime effort, filling in for traditionally male jobs. The W ASPs faced various occurrences of gender discrimination and bias during their training and careers after graduation, such as wage inequality, which stemmed from standard 1930s and 40s views on gender roles that was reinforced by male pilot counterparts.