This past Sunday marked the end of 2025’s Women of Aviation Worldwide Week (March 3-9). According to the Institute for Women of Aviation Worldwide (iWOAW), the week-long international celebration is intended to raise awareness and encourage girls and women to become involved in the air and space industry. The first Women of Aviation Worldwide Week took place in 2010 to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the world’s first female pilot license, given to Elise Raymonde Deroche (later styled “Raymonde De Laroche”) on March 8, 1910. During the week, individuals and groups across 75 countries organize events and programs aimed at introducing women and girls to “multiple facets of the industry.”
While she was the first woman to get a pilot license, de Laroche was not the only woman involved with early aviation. Katharine Wright, sister to aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur, helped to fund her brothers work by managing their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio and Ida Holdgreve, a Dayton-area seamstress, was hired to sew the fabric covers for the Wright Brothers’ airplane wings and rudders.
The title of this blog entry comes from a song believed to have been inspired by yet another woman in early aviation, Josephine Sarah Magner. According to the Epping Historical Society, Josephine began her airborne career by parachuting out of hot air balloons, tested an early dirigible with her husband, and later served as a civilian parachute instructor during World War II. The Library has several versions of the song available for listening as part of the National Jukebox, including a version sung by Harry Tally and another version sung by Blanche Ring.
I invite you to take a listen as we dive into the American Folklife Collections related to women in aviation, accompanied by photographs of female aviation pioneers.
Center for Applied Linguistics Collection
First up in our flight through AFC collections is a recording of a speech by famed pilot, Amelia Earhart.
The speech is from the American English Dialect Recordings: The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection (AFC 1986/022). This collection, which includes 405 audio recordings (350 of which are digitized and available online) is one of my favorites due to its sheer breadth. From Bigfoot to dog training, cottage cheese production to a discourse on the effects of racism in the medical industry in 1980s Arizona, chances are you can find something relevant in the American English Dialect Recordings.
Amelia Earhart’s speech, titled “On the Future of Women in Flying” was originally broadcast as part of a WNYC radio program on “Women in the Future” in 1935. In the speech, Earhart talks about the impact that scientific advancement has and will continue to have on the lives of Americans – particularly women. “This modern world of science and invention is a particular interest to women,” she began, “for the lives of women have been more affected by its new horizon than those of any other group.” Though she acknowledged that recent accomplishments “in the remoter fields of pure research” were important to the overall development of new technology, Earhart believed that the greatest benefit of the recent inventions was in the “access of this new and growing economic independence upon women themselves.”
Being a pilot, Earhart acknowledged that she was most interested in the scientific advances related to air transportation:
“Flying is, perhaps, the most dramatic of recent scientific attainment. In the brief span of thirty odd years, the world has seen an inventor’s dream first materialized by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk become an everyday actuality. Perhaps I’m prejudiced, but to me it seems that no other phase of modern progress contrives to maintain such a brimming measure of romance and beauty coupled with utility as does aviation. Within itself, this industry embraces many of those scientific accomplishments which yesterday seemed fantastic impossibilities. The pilot, winging his way above the earth at two hundred miles an hour, talks by radio telephone to ground stations or to other planes in the air. In sick weather, he is guided by radio beams and receives detailed reports of conditions ahead, gleaned through special instruments and new methods of meteorological calculations. He sits behind engines, the reliability of which measured by yardsticks of the past is all but unbelievable.”
Earhart’s comments on the reliability of new engines and the scientific accomplishments of communications and instrumentation are particularly poignant, considering these same things contributed to her disappearance two years later during the final stage of her round-the-world flight. The final portion of her speech echoes the purpose of Women of Aviation Worldwide Week, in seeking to encourage women to get involved in aviation”
“Aviation, this young modern giant, exemplifies the possible relationship of women and the creations of science. Although women as yet have not taken full advantage of its use and benefits, air travel is as available to them as to men. As so often happens in introducing the new or changing the old, public acceptance depends peculiarly upon women than the attitude. In aviation they are arbiters of whether or not their families shall fly and, as such, are a potent influence. And lastly, there is a place within the industry itself for women who work. While still greatly outnumbered, they are finding more and more opportunities for employment in the ranks of this latest transportation medium. May I hope this movement will spread throughout all branches of applied science and industry and that women may come to share with men the joy of doing. Those can appreciate the rewards most who have helped create.”
Occupational Folklife Project – Archie Green Fellowships
The American Folklife Center’s Occupational Folklife Project is another excellent resource for those looking for more stories about women in aviation. The goal of the project is “to document the culture of contemporary American workers during an era of economic and social transition.” Coincidentally, the Occupational Folklife Project began the same year as Women in Aviation Worldwide Week. Out of the more than 1800 oral history interviews that have been collected, there are two collections of particular relevance to this topic:
Boeing Aircraft Factory Workers (AFC 2012/036)focuses on the occupational folklore of employees of Boeing’s aircraft manufacturing facilities in the Wichita, Kansas area. Included in the collection are interviews with six women:
- Jennifer Marshall – a structural engineer with Spirit Aerosystems
- Molly McMillan – an aviation reporter for the Wichita Eagle
- Conne Palacioz – an airplane riveter, who worked on Boeing planes in WWII
- Sandra Reddish – collections manager at Fort Riley Museums, and former Boeing engineer
- Mary Rush – wife of former Boeing assembler, and
- Jo Wood, a materials expeditor
Agricultural Aviation: Crop Dusters in Rural America (AFC 2020/007) documents the occupational experiences of agricultural pilots, small airport owners, managers of small crop-dusting firms, and a National Agricultural Aviation Association representative. The collection includes interviews with Emily Daniel, a third-generation pilot who learned to fly as a teenager, and Lisa Kingsley, who manages their family’s crop dusting business.
Originally, Emily Daniel had her eyes set on another part of the skies – she wanted to be a meteorologist. While studying atmospheric science at Salisbury University, she learned about “Hurricane Hunters,” NOAA and National Guard programs that involve flying into hurricanes. She admitted that, had she not discovered agricultural pilots, she probably would have gone that route.
Emily Daniel remembered mentioning her desire to become an Ag Pilot to a retired pilot from Texas. He told her that women can’t be Ag Pilots because they have to be responsible for making dinner and looking after children. Her response? “Okay, well, you know, I don’t have to be the one that makes dinner.” She shared that the comment first “put a little damper on everything for a little while,” but that she then decided to use it as fuel for her dreams. “And right then and there,” she said, “I decided, okay, I’m gonna do it. I don’t care who’s gonna try to stop me.”
While listening to Emily Daniel’s interview, I was struck by a moment of connection with Earhart’s speech:
“You know, this is the 100th year of Ag Aviation, so I thought that this was a really cool project that you guys were doing in that timeframe. I would just want to highlight the importance. I’m not sure how to phrase that, but how far ag aviation has come since 1921. I mean, it was a crop experiment. And then, you know, over the years it’s just really hard to adapt, and change with technology. And what we can do now is amazing, the precision agricultural technology that we have on board. Weather, automatic gates, automatic spray, and just, you know, the testing that goes into all these products, as well as the crop products…it has come such a long way in that really short span of time. I think that’s pretty cool.”
Veterans History Project
The Veterans History Project “collects, preserves and makes accessible the firsthand recollections of U.S. military veterans who served from World War I through more recent conflicts and peacekeeping missions.” Included in these collections are oral history interviews with women who served in the U.S. armed forces as pilots, aviation machinist mates, air controlmen, and other aviation-related jobs.
Ethel Meyer Finley, who served during World War II, first flew as part of the Civilian Pilot Training Program. Finley had grown up on a farm and spoke of her earliest introduction to flying during a 1998 interview:
“The first I became aware of airplanes, as you know Lindbergh was a farm boy, but a different kind of farm boy. I didn’t realize the difference, but he was a different kind of farm boy. His father was a gentleman farmer. But Lindbergh was labeled a farm boy from Minnesota. I can remember the day he made that famous trip. I was seven years old when he did that ocean trip. I don’t know any of the details, but it impressed me. And I was intrigued by it. I don’t know if it had anything to do with learning to fly, but I remember having dreams of being able to fly myself, you know, without an airplane. I was jumping off the barn and I would be flying over the wires that went from the house to the barn. […] That was my first recollection of airplanes and flying.”
Later, while attending college, Finley’s boyfriend told her about a new class for pilots:
“We had often talked about airplanes and Winona was known to be one of the aviation centers of Minnesota. Max Conrad was located here, and he was one of the best-known barnstorming pilots. So I came in after being home for the summer to start my senior year of college. Eddie could hardly stand it until I got there. He said, guess what? We’re going to have flying in college. I asked, ‘What’s it going to cost?’ Nothing, he said. And he said, ‘guess what, I signed up for it. It is going to be a class often, and they will take one girl.’ Well, wow, you couldn’t see me for dust. I was immediately down at the president’s office. I wasn’t going to mess around and see who was in charge. I’d go to the top. That is still kind of my tendency. So I signed up. I was the first one, and I got it.”
Because she already had a part-time job in addition to being a student and taking on a student teacher role at school, Finley’s first flying lessons started at 6am. Despite the tiring day, Finley excelled at the Civilian Pilot Training Program. She got her pilot’s license in 1940, finishing the program in the wintertime – which meant flying a plane that had been fitted with skis instead of wheels in order to land on the snow. When describing her instructor’s method of teaching, Finley said “Max did not know anything about being a teacher, but he could fly anything, knew anything about an airplane. He taught you to fly by flying.” If you’re wondering just what that entails, Finley offered an example:
“You would go up high enough so you weren’t going to get into any trouble. And, you did stalls. You would get the feel of how it was to stall. You’d get all these maneuvers. You learned to fly by flying which is a rather interesting experience instead of all these different techniques. The air speed indicator might not be correct, you know. So, you sensed the feel in your body of what it felt like when you’re coming in.”
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Finley got an invitation to apply as a pilot with an experimental civil service program that was under the U.S. Air Force’s jurisdiction. While others complained about the food, or struggled with the academic side of the training, Finley had primarily positive memories of the entire experience. “I still have visions of how I loved sitting under the wing of a plane, hot as it was with the black top of the ramp sticky, waiting for my turn to fly,” she said. “Nothing bothered me.”
Years after finishing her service, Ethel was asked to write about her experiences during the war:
“She wants me to write for Veteran’s Day, and I don’t want to call it Veteran’s Day; I want it to be Armistice Day. Or at least recognize it means peace; and what you do for peace. I think that was one of the things that was very much a factor in many of our lives at that time. You know, I wasn’t just a starry-eyed kid; I really believe in our country, and patriotism and the values. And even when I go abroad, I’m glad to get home. I still have that great feeling of it.”
Ethel’s interview is featured in the VHP presentation The WASP: First in Flight. This presentation highlights the stories of ten women who served as part of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Trained to fly military aircraft and train pilots, these women were never fully incorporated into the armed forces. Although the page only highlights ten of these women, many more interviews with WASPs can be found in VHP’s holdings. A common thread through all of the WASP interviews I listened to while preparing this post was a shared early desire to fly like the birds. In her interview, Violet Cowden remarked “I always wanted to fly. I was born in a sod house on a farm in South Dakota, and the hawks used to be flying, and I thought, ‘Gosh, if I could just do that.’ […] I think that I wanted to fly from the time I was about six or seven years old.”
Not every WASP spent their formative years looking towards the sky, though. Prior to joining the program, Julie Jenner Stege had been a chorus girl, performing in dance revues like the Ziegfield Follies. “All the glamor shows,” she observed. When the war started, she wanted to help her country, so she worked to get a pilot’s license and joined the first women to fly military planes. Gone were the glittering costumes of the Follies. Instead, the women often wore surplus men’s uniforms – so long in the arms and legs that the cuffs had to be rolled up, and so loose they had to be tied up with belts. The living conditions, likewise, were short of glamor. As Mildred Dalrymple explained:
“We were put in bays. There were six girls to a bay, and then a latrine, and then six other girls to a bay. You’ve got twelve young women, two commodes, two mirrors, two sinks. You can forget about privacy. You can forget about vanity. you can forget about any of the things that young girls are usually used to.”
Things often weren’t any better when the women were ferrying planes around the country, either. Jane Miller told her commanding officer that she was up for anything, but for longer ferry flights she would request another female pilot as a buddy. “I don’t want to fly with just guys,” she explained, “because, you know, oh man, it was terrible. We’d go into a base and then they’d have to find special rooms for the girls. Many of them barely had – they had stand-up toilets. They weren’t set up for girls. If you’ve ever tried being a girl at a stand-up toilet…” she trailed off. Eventually, Miller left the WASP program. Female pilots were only allowed to fly in the United States and Miller wanted to go overseas during the war, so she volunteered next with the Red Cross. “I didn’t want to just do something for the glamor or the glory or the apple, ” she clarified. “I wanted to do something that mattered.” I found it interesting, then, that glamor did find Jane Miller, in a way, during her time with the Red Cross. While stationed in Paris, she met and befriended actress Marlene Dietrich, and ended up accompanying her on a trip to southern France.
Included in VHP collections is an interview with Rosalie J. Hughes (nicknamed Rosie), a civilian who worked in an airplane factory during WWII. [Note: In line with the enabling legislation, VHP no longer accepts civilian accounts.] Two of Rosie’s brothers were serving overseas – one in the South Pacific and one in England. With her mother volunteering with the Red Cross and her father working as an air-raid warden, Rosalie wanted to help with the war effort and went to work as a riveter, making B-25 bombers in a plant in Kansas City, Kansas. “I traded my schoolbooks for a toolbox,” she said.
Rosalie received electrician training at the Civil Defense School before beginning work at the plant. She started out working on the nose of the airplanes, riveting the aluminum together into what she called “a tub.” Quality control involved holding a hose over the finished nose, to see if it developed any leaks. When Fisher Body, a former division of General Motors, began building the pilot compartment of the bombers, Rosalie was promoted to mechanic, where she was responsible for installing oxygen lines, gas lines, and heaters:
“I put in all of the wiring. I pulled the wiring up from the fuselage. We had to have wiring in the part for the pilot and the co-pilot. And then there was a bomb release down here. And then I did wiring for all the oxygen and all that, just like I did with this, map cases, cigarette things, all of those things that they had to have in the pilot’s compartment. What I think is interesting, we put in airplanes for the United States, China, and Great Britain. And I did the installation of all these things that they had to have to make things more comfortable for them. The ones that went to Russia got everything, the ones that went to Great Britain got just about everything, but the ones that went to China didn’t have hardly anything. So I had to ask, just how come China doesn’t get all of these things and he would answer my questions, ‘Yours is not to reason why, yours is but to do.’ My boss would say that. So, I thought that was always interesting.”
Rosalie worked in the factory from August 1942 to April 1945, when she left on maternity leave. After her husband, Jerry, returned from overseas and began working as a salesman, Rosalie stayed home to raise their kids (one of her daughters went on to join the Air Force). Thinking back on her time at the factory, Rosalie had this to say:
“I liked all the people,” she said. “All the different classes of people, all of the different, yes, they were all good people and I liked my work. I liked doing my work. […] We’d sometimes go to work, get up in the dark and come home in the dark. Worked 14 hours sometimes, getting these planes out, but you’re young then, you’re young. […] And I really didn’t mind that.”
The women covered here barely scratch the surface of the women who have served in aviation-related roles in the United States Armed Forces. I encourage you to visit the Veterans History Project and learn more about these women and their service experiences.
Further Reading
Continue to celebrate the spirit of women in aviation with these blog entries from around the Library of Congress:
- In Female Firsts: Pioneering Women Veterans through the Years, on AFC’s blog Folklife Today, a guest post on Folklife Today, VHP Liaison Specialist Andrew Huber highlights the service of female veterans such as Air Force veteran Lieutenant Colonel Janet Kovatch, helicopter pilot Lee Lane (U.S. Army), and Veronica Bradley, who was part of the first class of women to graduate from training and join the U.S. Marine Corps and repaired aircraft during World War II.
- The First Lady Astronaut Trainees, by Nate Smith from Inside Adams tells the story of thirteen women who underwent the same training as the Mercury 7 astronauts but were not allowed in space
- In Amelia Earhart, in History’s Hands, by Mark Hartsell, learn about the pilot’s signed palm print, held in the Manuscript Division
- Earhart made her share of headlines, and you can read about them over on Headlines and Heroes, the Library’s Newspapers and Periodicals blog, in the post Amelia Earhart: Mystery and True Heroine by Malea Walker
- This guest post by Science Reference Librarian Denise Dempsey, Hidden Figures No More: African American Women in Space Exploration, discusses the stories of Dorothy Johnson Vaughn, Mary Winston Jackson, and Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson, depicted in the film Hidden Figures
Check out these research guides on women in aviation:
- American Female Pilots: Topics in Chronicling America
- Early Women in Aviation: Topics in Chronicling America
- Amelia Earhart: A Resource Guide
Make an appointment to visit the Library of Congress to see these collection items:
- Portraits of European and U.S. men and women associated with the development of aviation, LOT 2644 (F) [P&P], Prints and Photograph Division
- Roy Friedman scrapbook, 1914-1987, MMC-3845, Manuscript Division
- Eleanor Spear papers, 1929-1930, MMC, Manuscript Division
- Encyclopedia of women in aviation and space, by Rosanne Welch. Reference in the Science & Business Reading Room
Can’t make it to the Library in person? View these digital resources on the Library’s website:
- See digital scans of the original score for “Come Josephine,” by composer Fred Fisher
- Listen to Blanche Ring’s version of the song on the National Jukebox
- And compare it to the one sung by Harry Tally
- Watch a special interview with author Margot Lee Shetterly and producer Donna Gigliotti about the women of NASA