CNN on Monday included a refreshing piece on the seven women who are trained and ready to fly Pakistan’s F-7 supersonic fighter jets in the Air Force. For sixty years, it was nearly impossible to break into the male dominated profession. According to BBC News, “Women could join the armed forces but only for non-combat jobs like the medical corps.”
That changed six years ago, when the Pakistan Air Force decided to allow women to train as fighter pilots. Although women cadets are small in number, they are making strides. Back in 2006, the BBC reported that one of the graduating women flying officers, Nadia Gul, “received the trophy for best academic achievement along with two of her male colleagues who got trophies for best flying performance and general duties.”
On Monday, CNN’s Reza Sayah spoke to the seven women along with their male counterparts. He reported, “To become a fighter pilot takes three years of training at the Air Force Academy in Risalpur, Pakistan…The training is often intensely physical. Here, equal opportunity means equal treatment.” Commanding officer Tanvir Piracha noted, “If they are not good enough as per their male counterparts, we don’t let them fly.” The aforementioned female pilot, Nadia Gul, told CNN, “Islam gives equal opportunity to females. Whatever we want to do we can.”
The debate over women in military combat is ongoing throughout the world, and in Pakistan, we have a ways to go. But if the video below shows you anything, it’s that these female Mavericks are breaking barriers, challenging taboos, and really just kicking butt. Enjoy:
I only limited myself to three Top Gun references this entire post, but I just HAVE to include the music vid for “Dangerzone” here, it is one of the best bad 80’s movie theme songs ever!:
[…] profession. According to BBC News, “Women could join the […] Read more at: CHUP! – Changing Up Pakistan air force academy, breaking barriers, chup, cnn, cup of tea, female fighter pilots, female […]
bad-ass
Thanks for sharing Kalsoom! These girls and others like them throughout the country are our real future.
haha
http://kanyelicio.us/https://changinguppakistan.wordpress.com/
funny!!
nice piece…the CNN piece is really good, except for reza sayahs voice..hahahahaha..can’t stand the guys voice..he sounds like he’s trying to tell a story to a group of five year olds.
always great to see a story like this. pakistan’s future is best served by the women of this nation.
This is great … and then people have the nerve to say that Pakistan isn’t progressing .. Hmph.
A friend’s sister is a pilot in PIA…she gets equal treatment. My cousin’s wife is a lieutenant commander in the Navy…she’s doing fine. The midwife who delivered me went on to become either a lieutenant general or a rear admiral…one of the two…can’t remember.
So there is a history that women have serving in important roles in Pakistan. Glad you highlighted this.
But painfully, women are relegated to a very inferior role in our society and the government nor the religious clergy are doing anything about it.
I agree Yawar. We can have all these small changes, but it really amounts to nothing if the people on top don’t enact reforms to help change policy and ultimately perceptions.
Case in point, in college I interned with a women’s NGO that worked with women in prison. Back in 2001, many of the women who were in prison were victims of the Hudood Ordinance – either they had been raped and were thrown in jail for adultery or their husbands wanted to divorce them and had them thrown in for the same charge. Recently, I went back to the jails and due to the Women’s Protection Act in 2006, the entire demographics had changes (i.e. adultery was a bailable offense – so women could be bailed out, etc.). Is it a perfect situation now? of course not. But it is an example how grassroots change must be coupled with legal or legislative reform at the top in order to achieve small steps towards progress.
I hate to be a dissenter, but I actually don’t agree — I don’t think this actually represents REAL progress. To me, this seems more like the Pakistani Air Force trying to pander to the overly-militaristic United States. I mean, it’s not like the PAF would ever allow these women to actually go into battle against the Taliban. Don’t get me wrong, I am (obviously) in support of equal treatment for women, but I don’t think the existence of female fighter pilots represents that equality.
Personally, I’d be a lot happier hearing about an increase in the number of female PhDs in the country or hearing about women being given equal opportunities as men to contribute to the growth of Pakistan.
This is just a stupid publicity stunt.
I see your point FI – as I mentioned in my post, Pakistan is far, far away from being seen as gender progressive.
However, while on the surface this could be seen as a stupid publicity stunt (I mean, it did garner quite a bit of media attention) – this entire program started six years ago in Pakistan. When I did further research, I actually found that two years ago, Nadia Gul, who won an award while in training, was the same person Reza Sayah spoke to in this week’s CNN report. If it was a publicity stunt, most of these women wouldn’t still be there six years later.
And I think it’s hard to judge them not flying into combat as a litmus stick for real progress, since most women in modern militaries around the world still can’t do that.
None of this in my opinion means that we’ve achieved one giant leap for womenkind in Pakistan – but small efforts like these are breaking some kind of barriers, regardless of whether it means real progress. And I know other efforts like these are continuing with women in other realms, the problem is that they haven’t been realized as anything other than grassroots micro-level efforts.
I think the gender of the pilot is entirely irrelevant
Thanks for highlighting this. I am very proud of these women.
My father was the Air Officer Commanding of the PAF Risalpur Academy when the first batch of female fighter pilots was taken in. He mentions that they went through extremely heated debates when the decision was first made to induct women into the flying branch of the PAF (they’ve had women in other branches such as engineering, air traffic control, admin, education and medicine for numerous years). So the initial decision was to take a few women in for three years as a pilot project and then re-evaluate. However, after the amazing performance of these women, they decided to make it a permanent feature.
In 2006, the Sword of Honour (for best flying and academic performance) was awarded to Saira Amin who was from the second batch of graduating female pilots. My dad had flown with her during her training and tests and even though he is usually very reserved in his praise, he mentioned that she was one of the best pilots he had ever flown with– extremely calm and composed during pressure.
Even though I have my reservations about sending women into sensitive combat operations, I really do believe that those women who want to serve their country should be given the opportunity to do so. Especially if they prove themselves to be not just as good as the men, but in fact the very best of the lot.
Tamreez,
Thanks for your incredible insight, esp. for those of us who may not know the inner workings of the Air Force! I’m so glad they decided to turn it into a permanent feature.
Keep it up my and whole nation with you becz i want to be also fighter pilot but bad luck…
We are proud of our armed forces and this show that here the women are treated the same as the men, thts wht Islam teach us and thats what we do. District Swabi