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Conversations astir women-centric moving environments, aboriginal introduction pathways, sustained mid-career enactment and life-stage-appropriate policies dominated the Women successful Aviation roundtable astatine Wings India 2026 connected Wednesday.
The league brought unneurotic women leaders from government, regulators, airlines, airports, manufacturers and probe institutions. Speakers broadly agreed that portion women’s introduction into aviation has improved successful caller years, information remains uneven crossed domains, with important attrition astatine mid-career and enactment levels.
Usha Padhee, Principal Secretary to the Government of Odisha, said India’s aviation workforce shows some advancement and gaps. While women marque up astir 15% of pilots successful India — good supra the planetary mean of astir 5% — galore of the 80 to 100 recognised aviation occupation roles stay mostly retired of scope for women. “We person been precise selective. Intent exists, but accidental indispensable beryllium supported by a robust ecosystem,” she said.
Johanna Koch of Lufthansa Technik said aviation continues to subordinate circumstantial jobs with circumstantial genders, peculiarly successful engineering and method domains. “We request to abstracted assemblage from gender,” she said, adding that women marque the “missing portion successful the puzzle”, bringing affectional quality and relationship-building capabilities that are often undervalued contempt being captious to organisational growth.
Mid-career exits were highlighted arsenic the sector’s biggest failure. Shivani Singh Deo, state manager for India astatine Virgin Atlantic, said women bash not permission aviation owed to deficiency of ambition but due to the fact that the ecosystem does not enactment continuity. “Even wherever entry-level information improves, women extremity up leaving midway due to the fact that workplaces are not flexible oregon supportive enough,” she said.
Virginia Aranzazu, caput of Human Resources for Airbus, underscored aboriginal involution arsenic cardinal to semipermanent change. “Organisations indispensable prosecute girls astatine schoolhouse level to exposure them to the afloat spectrum of aviation careers, from manufacturing to operations,” she said. Airbus, she added, has launched initiatives for students from classes 5 to 10 and created women-focused interior networks successful India to foster enactment development.
From a skilling perspective, Praveena Yagnambhat, main of unit astatine Boeing India, spoke astir the Sukanya programme, which has established STEM labs successful authorities schools and is present supporting its archetypal cohort of aspiring women pilots. “We person identified six Sukanya pilots and volition enactment them with scholarships and mentorship passim their journey,” she said.
Rashmi Hundekari, main idiosyncratic astatine CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories, warned against tokenism successful hiring. Shyamali Haldar from aerial postulation absorption said predominant transfers, deficiency of schooling facilities astatine non-tenure stations and inadequate women-centric policies were forcing trained women controllers retired of the system. Kiran Jain, main operating serviceman of Noida International Airport, said menopause remains a mostly unaddressed contented successful firm policy, often derailing women’s careers aft years of nonrecreational investment.
Nivedita Dubey of the Airports Authority of India added that alongside bringing younger women into the workforce, policies indispensable absorption connected ‘life-stage-specific’ challenges faced by women already successful the strategy to guarantee optimal utilisation of existing talent.
Summing up the discussion, IndiGo’s Neha Narain said India’s aviation ambitions cannot beryllium realised without women’s afloat participation. “We are the world’s third-largest aviation market, with craft orders acceptable to treble successful the coming years. Growth is intolerable if fractional the colonisation is excluded,” she said.
The league concluded with a wide connection that meaningful inclusion successful aviation volition beryllium not simply connected improving entry-level numbers, but connected sustained, policy-backed efforts that alteration women to physique long, uninterrupted careers crossed each conception of the industry.
