RICHARD GEARING FRAeS, Chair of the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Diversity & Inclusion Working Group, discusses the work the Society is doing to create an aerospace and aviation community that inspires, attracts and retains people from different backgrounds.
This week the Royal Aeronautical Society unveiled its rainbow Pride flag outside its global headquarters in London for the first time. In advance of both the International Day of LGBTQ+ People in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths on 5 July and London Pride on 6 July this year, it represents a visible symbol of commitment to support LGBTQ+ people in both our membership and the wider aerospace and aviation community.
New Pride flag outside the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Headquarters, at 4 Hamilton Place.
But a symbol is not enough on its own. This year represents 50 years since the Stonewall uprising in New York which set in motion the modern Pride movement. Pride is a celebration of all that has been achieved for LGBTQ+ inclusion over the past five decades, but it is also a protest that serves to highlight that barriers for the LGBTQ+ community still remain a reality in our world.
The Royal Aeronautical Society knows that neither it nor the wider aerospace and aviation community are fully reflective of wider society. However, the Society is committed and determined to change that. The business and legal reasons for doing so are well known, but the most important reason for doing so is that, morally, it is simply the right thing to do. Talent and a passion for aerospace and aviation should be the only prerequisites for success in our community.
The Society has been championing the need to improve the representation of women in the aerospace and aviation community for some time. Indeed, 2019 represents 10 years since the Society’s Women in Aviation and Aerospace Committee (WAAC) was founded. Their work has included annual conferences and the establishment of the Amy Johnson named lecture. Indeed, at this year’s lecture we were honoured to have Pamela Anderson (ESA Applications UK Ambassador Network, Regional Ambassador) and Catherine Hamelin (CTO Office, Satellite Applications Catapult) as keynote speakers.
alta is a new platform for female-to-female mentoring (alta).
More recently, we have relaunched our mentoring platform for women, alta. The platform has been developed to allow female mentors to offer their skills to women who seek support in specific career or personal areas (such as maternity leave, career breaks or work-life balance) and for female mentees to identify a mentor with the suitable experience to suit their development needs.
However, the Society recognised a couple of years ago that its approach to Diversity & Inclusion needed to move beyond a focus solely on women, with additional emphasis needed, amongst others, on race, LGBTQ+, disability and social mobility. In response to that the Society’s Council set up a Diversity & Inclusion Working Group and charged it with achieving the following:
• Reviewing and assessing the Diversity and Inclusion position of the Royal Aeronautical Society across its key areas of business, learned and charitable activities
• Producing a Diversity and Inclusion Strategy for the Society based on its evaluation;
• Helping to coordinate implementation of the D&I Strategy to RAeS boards, committees, Branches, members, Corporate Partners and key stakeholders so that it becomes embedded across all key activities
• Review progress and report to Council on an annual basis
From commitments to action
The resulting Diversity & Inclusion Strategy identified three principal strands of work. Firstly, that the Society needs to focus internally on improving the diversity of its membership. This requires the Society to take a critical look at how it does its business to ensure that it is inclusive in its approach. This has included facilitated unconscious bias training for the Council and Board of Trustees, the roll-out of online training for other Boards and Committees, formalised diversity and inclusion requirements in Term of Reference and, in a couple of weeks, we will be holding a workshop to help Boards and Committees convert their diversity and inclusion commitments into specific deliverable actions.
We are also working with the Society’s Branches to develop practical diversity and inclusion actions and we recently had a useful discussion session at the most recent Branches Conference in May, reflecting the important role the Branches have as our principal interface with the membership. Our ultimate aim is that all who work in aerospace and aviation should feel that the Royal Aeronautical Society, as the world’s global professional body, is their professional body.
However, the Society cannot be purely introspective. Our role as a professional body is to set the standard across the aerospace and aviation community and provide leadership on diversity and inclusion. This should not be an unusual position for us to take – in degree programme accreditation, professional development and, perhaps most obviously, in professional engineering registration we already perform a role in maintaining and enhancing professional standards. Our ultimate aim in this context is that all members of the aerospace and aviation community, including employers, should be able to turn to us for authoritative advice on diversity and inclusion, as they might already for a whole range of other matters within our sector.
Women in Aviation and Aerospace Charter Members at RAeS HQ
We recognise that this is no mean feat and the third strand of the Strategy recognises the need to work with our partners and other organisations and support diversity and inclusion initiatives across the sector. This includes being a founding signatory to the Women in Aviation and Aerospace Charter at the 2018 Farnborough Air Show and the Society was delighted to host fellow signatories at its headquarters in September 2018 to discuss the next steps to support the aims and objectives of the Charter, including the roll-out of the alta mentoring platform and work to produce a new report to analyse the current state of play with regards to women’s representation and progression in key roles within aerospace and aviation. The Society is also grateful for the support of a number of our Corporate Partners who so willingly share their good practice with us on diversity and inclusion. We will continue to seek to form relationships with organisations that share our objectives on diversity and inclusion.
However, perhaps our most significant relationship in this area is with the Royal Academy of Engineering. As a signatory to the Academy’s Engineering Diversity Concordat, the Society has committed to:
• To communicate commitment to equality and inclusion principles and practices.
• To take action to increase diversity amongst those in professional engineering membership and registration.
• To monitor and measure progress.
Progression Framework Booklet (Royal Academy of Engineering.)
The Society uses the Diversity and Inclusion Progression Framework for Professional Bodies developed by the Academy, in conjunction with the Science Council, as its principal means of assessing progress in diversity and inclusion. The Society has set an objective that it should achieve at least Level 3 (“Engaging”) across all eight pillars in the Framework by 2025.
There is undoubtedly much to do, but the Diversity and Inclusion Working Group will not achieve this on its own. Improving diversity and inclusion is not merely about reviewing processes – it requires a change in culture and behaviours. The Society has to look to all its members, not least its Fellows, to show leadership in this area. Without their support, little progress will be made. To that end, the Society will continue to assess what it can do to help its members in advancing a diverse and inclusive culture, but membership involvement in that is key. The Diversity and Inclusion Working Group is therefore always keen to hear the views of members on this subject.
So, as we reflect on a flag fluttering outside the Society’s Headquarters this Pride month, we remember that it is a waypoint on, rather than the end of, a journey to both a Society and aerospace and aviation community that appeals to the broadest range of society.