Kicking off the air show on the fourth day, the first of the two public days that culminates Aero India 2019, was a batch of 10 parachuters who jumped from a helicopter 5,000 feet over Yelahanka tarmac. Half the jumpers were women in keeping with the Women’s Day theme being observed on Saturday.
Enthralling the burgeoning crowds, the parachuters hopped from the Mi-15 helicopter, dropped in free fall for the first 2,000 feet before deploying their parachutes.
Leading the women’s team, Air Devils, is Wing Commander Asha Jyotirmai, 44, an accounts officer with the IAF, who decided to pursue her passion of skydiving with the Directorate of Air Force Adventure School.
“The moment I joined the IAF in 1997, I wanted to skydive. Fortunately, they’ve given me the option through the Adventure school. It may be an adventure, but it marries with it aspects of aerial drop operations,” she said. Wg. Cdr Jyotirmai has since had 864 skydiving jumps, the highest for any woman skydiver in India.
She vehemently stresses that for parachuters, there is no difference between men and women. “The only thing that matters is a presence of mind and physical and mental fitness. And women have shown they can excel at it all,” she said.
Wg Cdr Sangita Paulraj, who is from Bengaluru and has over 307 jumps, said there were “great opportunities” in skydiving, and women should not hesitate to enter the field.
Apart from them, the aerobatics display featured perhaps the most women in any Aero India. Three women flew the Cheetak helicopter, one in the Sarang helicopter aerobatic displays, two in the Dornier transporter while four women manned the operations in the Air Traffic Controller.
Women in aero show
The aero show this time around has seen an effort to showcase women in aviation, whether it is the launch of commemorative stamps by the postal department or felicitation of women pilots, officers, scientists and others.
“This is a start, but we will see a much larger participation of women in Aero India from the next edition onwards,” said Richa Misra, Joint Secretary (Navy), Ministry of Defence.
G. Satheesh Reddy, Chairman DRDO, estimates that 24% of the workforce in the defence Public Sector Undertakings were women. “We may see an increase to 50% in the coming years,” he said.
Breaking glass ceilings
Barely 12% of pilots – civil and military – are women, with much work needed to be done to bring more women in the sector, said Harpreet A. De Singh, President of Indian Women Pilots' Association, which represents over 1,000 women officers. The organisation started their Bengaluru chapter which on Saturday, with the hope of enrolling over 200 members in the city.
“In 1988, I was one of the four pilots in civil aviation. To go from there to 12% is no mean feat. The strong patriarchy we had to face then has eased a bit now. There has been a distinct cultural change. Glass ceilings have been broken,” she said.
The focus of the organisation is to get more women students interested in the aviation sector as pilots or even in the technical teams for the maintenance of aircraft where their representation has been low.