JetBlue chief executive Robin Hayes is urging airlines to sign up to IATA’s 25by2025 gender balance initiative, arguing that the industry cannot afford to miss out on talent.
The voluntary initiative, launched in 2019, commits signatories to increase the number of women in senior positions and under-represented areas by 25%, or up to a minimum of 25% by 2025. IATA has almost 200 member signatories, including over 160 airlines. That accounts for just over half its airline members.
Hayes’ own carrier JetBlue was the only airline in FlightGlobal’s most recent analysis of female representation in the C-suite among the 100 biggest airlines to have women employed in more than half of the six senior roles.
Speaking on a diversity panel at the IATA AGM in Istanbul today, Hayes urged those members that have not signed up already to do so.
”As an industry we have a huge labour talent shortage over the next 20-30 years,” he said. “We are privileged to be in a growth industry where we need people, so we have got to make this profession more attractive. That means we need ….people from all walks of life. We need to get people from other industries to come and work with this industry. So they’ve got to feel its really welcoming and diverse.
”Look at what we do; we fly around the world, diversity; our customers are incredibly diverse. Everything we do is diverse,” he says, but notes the industry still needs to do more to ensure it has enough diversity in its own leadership.
The South African CAA’s director of civil aviation, Poppy Khoza – who was recognised in the Inspirational Role Model category in IATA’s Diversity and Inclusion Awards – underlines the importance of leaders setting the right tone.
”For as long as we have leaders who don’t have the foresight about the benefits of having both women and men working together, understanding one doesn’t haven’t to compete with each other, and that men and women have a lot of offer, then I think we we are doomed,” she says.
