My wife and I are both military helicopter pilots. Now it's a known fact that women cannot fly as well as men, but they try, and should be given credit for their efforts. I kid, I kid... Women in military aviation really aren't anything special, and I mean that in a good way. They're just like everyone else in military aviation. We don't treat them differently, they don't treat us differently. It's always the outside that wants to single them out and treat them differently. As an instructor pilot, some of my best students were women, some of my worst students were women, and it had nothing to do with their gender.
For example, a local news team came to our base when we were in Pensacola to do a piece on women in aviation. They grabbed my wife and her friend to do some of the interview portions of the story. The news people kept asking leading questions and things to basically try to get Helen and her friend to differentiate themselves from all the other pilots, like they some special breed of pilot because of their anatomy... They just kept telling the news people that there IS no difference. We're all on the same team, and we all possess the same training and skills, we're not male pilots and female pilots, we're just pilots. They ran the story anyway, but didn't air most of that and still put their spin on it to make it seem like there's some magical difference.
I often find that it's the people who think they're helping a cause by emphasizing those differences that really do nothing but perpetuate the problems and biases that existed in the first place. Groups that make it a big point to emphasize when a woman or minority achieves something great are hurting not helping. It's almost like saying the accomplishment is greater, because look, even a woman was able to do it! Just stop thinking of people by their genders or races, accept that we're all people, and move on with your life. Celebrate that humans have great achievements, not women vs men, or black vs white...
