Frequent Flyers
Is the ratio of men to women travelling by airplane different from that in the general population? Fisher Chia-Yu Chen (2007) had 45.5% male respondents to a questionnaire distributed at an airport in Taiwan. Several air travel papers (e.g. Warburg et al (2006)) cite the results of Resource Systems Groups' SurveyCafe's 2003 results - which note no patterns in airline passenger gender. Northwest Airline's SkyRadio reports that 48% of their passengers are male. Generally speaking, it appears that no, there is no difference.
Color me shocked! I genuinely expected to find that men made up a disproportionate number of airline passengers. It's actually sort of reassuring. I was also expecting to see well-meaning-yet-deeply-offensive explanations that women weren't flying "because of the children" or "because travel isn't necessary to their jobs." I really expected to be depressed by this topic. On the other hand, I also expected to see more available information on it. Even finding these three feeble references was harder than I expected.
(FYI: Response time may be a bit slower today. I'm catching a 6:00am flight.)
Color me shocked! I genuinely expected to find that men made up a disproportionate number of airline passengers. It's actually sort of reassuring. I was also expecting to see well-meaning-yet-deeply-offensive explanations that women weren't flying "because of the children" or "because travel isn't necessary to their jobs." I really expected to be depressed by this topic. On the other hand, I also expected to see more available information on it. Even finding these three feeble references was harder than I expected.
(FYI: Response time may be a bit slower today. I'm catching a 6:00am flight.)