A Study on Women’s Empowerment in Aviation Industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

If a person can hoist his/her spiritual, political, social or economic forte, that is where you find empowerment. Per UN Women, empowering women is what you contribute fully to economic life across all sectors and it is essential to build stronger economies, achieve internationally agreed goals for development and sustainability. To achieve your career goals, your gender should not matter. This paper focuses on women’s empowerment in aviation sector. It discusses the factors influencing gender inequality, job quality, leadership, and glass ceiling. Global measures of gender equality show that in Sri Lanka the gender-based inequality is increasing despite the nation’s dramatically improving economy and poverty levels and meeting some Sustainable Development Goals. To explain this situation in aviation, a sample of 40 was taken to explore how they experienced gender and empowerment and to explore synergies, or lack thereof, with measures of women empowerment. What the data revealed was a complementary relationship between leadership and job quality where it direct to break the glass ceiling. The Glass ceiling referred to the phenomenon where men dominate the upper limit of management. The research clearly shows that in nations like Sri Lanka, women experience ‘modernization’ and globalization in complex ways that are influenced strongly at workplace especially in transportation sector. The candidates who participated in the research are personnel in aviation field and their experiences indicated that gender inequality and empowerment require far deeper analysis. As findings it is exposed that experiences could not be captured by global measures of gender equality and empowerment and suggest women empowering activities such as gender equality, leadership, job quality, job satisfaction, promotions, standards, personal growth, glass ceiling and competence have a positive relationship over women in aviation sector. As the efficiency of these functions are increased in relation the aviation sector women’s empowerment will also be increased.