May 20 and 21, 2022, marks the 90th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s pioneering nonstop, solo transatlantic flight from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Earhart’s remarkable 1932 flight still stands today as a significant milestone in aviation history and women’s history. Earhart was a decorated pilot and a major celebrity, second only to Charles Lindbergh in terms of sheer notoriety. She was an impactful woman whose surprising construction of a 1930s aviation career remains an inspiration to 21st century women and men.
Mention Earhart's name and everyone perks up; yes, they know who she is, and they probably have an opinion on why or where she disappeared on her 1937 round-the-world flight with navigator Fred Noonan. When an acknowledged media star disappears off the face of the Earth, public speculation can run wild. After all, her disappearance remains one of the great mysteries of the 20th century. After the largest United States maritime search of the era came up empty, and Amelia Earhart was declared legally dead, her disappearance continues to fuel speculation, and, her name remains in the public arena because of it. Is that the only reason Earhart is remembered? No. Her legacy serves a more valuable purpose.
Earhart had courage and commitment to embark on a path that was different from the norm, a tug she felt all her life. After leaving a junior college and nurse World War I Canadian soldiers, she learned to fly in 1921. Characteristically, she felt secure enough to immediately buy a Kinner Airster airplane and set an altitude record for women. Then, she jumped at the chance of a lifetime—the offer to become the first woman to fly as a passenger across the Atlantic Ocean. Earhart accepted the challenge even though flying the Atlantic in 1928 remained risky; 40 percent of the attempts in 1927 had failed, with 25 percent proving fatal.
By 1932, Earhart still craved acceptance as a serious pilot. Her successful solo transatlantic flight—with other women poised to do the same, and as only the second person to do so (Charles Lindbergh being the first)—forever separated her from the few hundred female pilots during the time. Still, she never abandoned them, serving as a founding member and the first president the Ninety-Nines, Inc., the first women pilot organization.
Highly motivated to build an aviation career, Earhart pursued record-setting flights, worked for associations and fledgling airline companies, and made public appearances and advertisements. She wrote articles, books (20 Hours and 40 Minutes; The Fun of It), and she gave thousands of lectures: "I make I record and then I lecture on it."
Flying was the easy part for Earhart as she feared a loss of independence if she married her manager, George Putnam. Yet they were a proven team, his public relations skills responsible for her initial success, and she liked him. Still, she demanded an escape clause if they did not find happiness after one year.
Together they launched a casual clothing line and a successful luggage line. She sat for spreads in Cosmopolitan magazine, for whom Earhart also wrote a column, and Edward Steichen portraits in Vanity Fair. Comfortable in pants and a leather flying jacket, she projected an androgynous image, in company with sports and movie stars like Katherine Hepburn. She embraced the media in print, radio, and newsreels.
Most impressively, she empathized with the average woman's situation, urging them to strive for personal achievement. Her deep commitment to women's equal rights, the National Women's Party, and the Women's League for Peace earned the respect of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, possibly the only woman of the 1930s more popular than Earhart. Never perceived as a shrill feminist, Earhart was a non-threatening advocate, counseling female Purdue engineering students despite disapproving male professors.
Earhart's aviation legacy is clear with her iconic red transatlantic Lockheed Vega housed at the National Air and Space Museum. Her broader influence is recognized in several ways. For example, in the mid-1970s, Judy Chicago produced The Dinner Party, an artwork celebrating 39 mythical and historical women at "place settings" around a Table and another 999 women, including Earhart, on tiles on a Heritage Floor. In 1993, GAP clothing store featured a photograph of her sporting khaki pants, as one of 13 "legendary writers, actors, adventurers with style" including Ernest Hemingway. In 1997, Steve Jobs debuted brilliant television and print ads designed to align Apple with the great minds, misfits, or rebels of the 20th century. Earhart was one of approximately 30 portraits, including Albert Einstein, presented with the then-striped Apple logo and the words: “Think Different.”
Defying gender roles, Amelia Earhart built an unorthodox career in a man's world, earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, was a compelling force for women's rights, and made celebrity work to her advantage, a complex combination of real and lasting impact. She is an iconic figure in American popular culture. All told, her flying career, liberal feminism, life, and death still matter.
So, what would Earhart say about women in aviation today?
Though pleased that legal barriers have fallen and that much more opportunities are now open to women, Earhart would be disheartened with the low numbers of women in aviation and aerospace careers. Although we occasionally see women piloting commercial and military aircraft (due to more than four decades of inclusion in these once exclusively male fields) and although always welcome in general aviation, less than eight percent of private pilots are women (rising female student pilot certificates may hold promise). The number of women in the aerospace community at large is disappointing and leadership roles are rare.
Addressing these issues is the newly published Breaking Barriers for Women in Aviation: Flight Plan for the Future, an illuminating report filled with compilations of accomplishments, embedded gender challenges, strategies, and education, mentor, and career resources that I encourage you to read. It was developed by the Women in Aviation Advisory Board (WIAAB), established in 2018 by Congress and charged with “developing and providing independent recommendations and strategies to the FAA Administrator to explore opportunities for encouraging and supporting female students and aviators to pursue a career in aviation."
Chaired by Heather Wilson, former Secretary of the Air Force, the broadly representative WIAAB board (including National Air and Space Museum education specialist Beth Wilson), identifies priority recommendations and strategies in these areas: culture, recruitment, retention, advancement, and data. Current disparities in the workplace and the law threaten gender and civil rights, safety, and the economy. A vital component for the future is the need to hold both industry and the government accountable for definitive progress.
Were she alive today, I believe Earhart would work feverishly with the WIAAB to confront the situation and ensure the sustained viability of women in the aerospace industry. In 1932, Amelia Earhart was an anomaly. In 2022, women in aviation and aerospace are visible but remain vastly underrepresented. We should be integral and ordinary. There is still a long road ahead on this cultural airway.
The Museum continues to honor this remarkable woman with the inaugural Amelia Earhart Lecture in Aviation History. Our first speaker for this annual premier aviation lecture is feminist historian and biographer Dr. Susan Ware, general editor, American National Biography, and Honorary Women's Suffrage Centennial Historian, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Dr. Ware is the author of Still Missing Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism. In her lecture, which can be watched on YouTube any time, revisits Amelia Earhart’s story and explores the continuing challenges of feminist biography.