Qatar faces scrutiny after women 'forcibly examined'

Yahoo – AFP, Gregory Walton, October 27, 2020 

Qatar Airways crew prepare to enter Sydney international airport to fly a repatriation
flight back to France on April 2, 2020, amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic

Qatar Airways crew prepare to enter Sydney international airport to fly a repatriation flight back to France on April 2, 2020, amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic

Revelations that passengers flying through Doha were forced to endure vaginal inspections have upended Qatar's efforts to boost its reputation before the Gulf state hosts World Cup 2022, experts say. 

Officers marched women off a Sydney-bound Qatar Airways flight earlier this month and forced them to undergo intimate examinations after a newborn baby was found abandoned in an airport bathroom. 

The incident sparked a diplomatic row between Australia and Qatar and comes as a setback for the gas-rich emirate, which has worked extensively to grow its soft power. 

Doha has invested heavily in its airline, Al-Jazeera broadcaster and social projects that include women's health and educational initiatives. 

But the conservative Muslim monarchy, where sex and childbirth out of wedlock are still punishable by jail, has struggled to reassure critics that its promises on women's rights, labour relations and democracy are credible. 

Mark Gell, founder of Sydney-based consultancy Reputation Edge, said "it could get out of hand from a reputational point of view for the airline", the state-run Qatar Airways. 

"Was it the airline's responsibility? We don't know. But absolutely it could impact their business," he told AFP. 

"If I shared this with my wife, I'm sure she'd turn around and say 'I'm never going through there again'." 

Adverts packed with top-flight footballers including Neymar have aired worldwide, touting Qatar Airways' extensive network, ultra-modern aircraft and glitzy Doha airport hub. 

World Cup 2022 host Qatar has struggled to reassure critics that its promises
on women's rights, labour relations and democracy are credible

Australia is a particularly important market for the carrier, which before the coronavirus pandemic served six cities Down Under and promoted repatriation flights for stranded nationals when other airlines grounded their fleets. 

'Avoid Qatar Airways' 

Alex Oliver of Sydney-based think tank the Lowy Institute said Australians -- especially women -- would "avoid Qatar Airways like the plague" after the October 2 incident. 

"It's a shocking move from a country that has spent billions of state funds on attempting to convey perceptions of a more liberal Gulf state," she said. 

But it is sport on which Qatar has staked its reputation, winning not just the 2022 World Cup and bidding for summer Olympics but also pouring cash into developing sport in poorer countries. 

Qatar has nonetheless had to contain several public relations crises in recent years linked to its shock victory in the competition to host the 2022 football tournament. 

As it began to ramp up construction, rights groups condemned Qatar's treatment of the hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers recruited from South Asia and other developing countries. 

Activists have long called on Qatar to decriminalise "love cases", women who become pregnant outside of marriage and give birth without the help of medics who are required to report such cases. 

Human Rights Watch told AFP Qatar should "examine the policy that led to the event in the first place".

Doha has invested heavily in its airline, Al-Jazeera broadcaster and social
projects to boost its image

'Betrayed' 

The ultra-wealthy country of 2.75 million people has also faced scrutiny over LGBT rights, jihadist fundraising, and its overseas military interventions since its 2010 victory in the battle to host the global soccer spectacle. 

Qatar's government has yet to address the airport allegations, despite a furious rebuke by Australia's Foreign Minister Marise Payne who called the incident "grossly disturbing, offensive (and) concerning". 

Late on Sunday, airport management released a statement claiming that "individuals who had access to the specific area of the airport where the newborn infant was found were asked to assist in the query". 

It gave no details about the procedures they were required to undergo and made no apology for the incident, but said the child was still alive and being cared for. 

Gell said it would not be enough for the airport management to downplay the allegations and suggest the women had merely been asked to help trace the abandoned baby's mother. 

"That's not going to hold up. In fact, that'll probably inflame it, to suggest that these women have voluntarily done this. I would find that difficult to believe," he said. 

Oliver said she was surprised the response "was so hardline and intransigent". 

"With the World Cup now getting very close, you would expect it to be back-pedalling madly." 

Expatriate women in Doha have reacted with shock and fear to the disclosures. 

"I can't help but think of my daughters if they had been on that plane," said one expatriate woman living in Doha who declined to be named for fear of retribution. 

"It makes me sick. I feel betrayed by the country I call home," said another.

US makes history with first all-female spacewalk

Yahoo – AFP, Issam AHMED, October 18, 2019

This image taken from NASA TV shows astronaut Christina Koch during a
spacewalk outside the International Space Station on October 18, 2019 (AFP Photo/HO)

Washington (AFP) - US astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir on Friday became the first all-female pairing to carry out a spacewalk -- a historic milestone as NASA prepares to send the first woman to the Moon.

"It symbolizes exploration by all that dare to dream and work hard to achieve that dream," Meir said after the 7-hour, 17-minute spacewalk to replace a power controller on the International Space Station.

The mission was originally planned for earlier this year but had to be aborted due to a lack of properly fitting spacesuits, leading to allegations of sexism.

Koch and Meir began the walk with standard safety checks on their suits and tethers, before making their way to the repair site on the station's port side, as the sunlit Earth came into view.

In a call to reporters just a few minutes before, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine emphasized the symbolic significance of the day.

"We want to make sure that space is available to all people, and this is another milestone in that evolution," he said.

"I have an 11-year-old daughter, I want her to see herself as having all the same opportunities that I found myself as having when I was growing up."

Suit flub

The first all-female spacewalk was supposed to take place in March but was canceled because the space agency had only one medium-sized suit. A male-female team performed the required task at a later date.

This undated combination photo obtained from NASA shows astronauts 

Christina Koch (L) and Jessica Meir (AFP Photo/HO)

The failure by traditionally male-dominated NASA to be adequately prepared was denounced in some quarters as evidence of implicit sexism.

When Koch and Meir had been outside the space station for about five hours, President Donald Trump reached them in a video call and told them they had made history.

"You are very brave, brilliant women," Trump said.

"You represent this country so well," the president added. "We are very proud of you."

Meir, a 42-year-old marine biologist who was recruited by NASA in 2013, answered by paying tribute to female pioneers of the past.

"We don't want to take too much credit because there have been many other female spacewalkers before us," she said.

"There's been a long line of female scientists, explorers, engineers and astronauts. We have followed in their footsteps, to get to where we are today."

After the call, the astronauts got back to their repair work.

"That is a view," one of them -- it was not clear which -- said at one point, as the earth was lit up in bright light from the sun.

Koch, an electrical engineer who is leading the mission, was carrying out her fourth spacewalk and was hooked up to the station's robotic arm.

Meir, making her first spacewalk, carefully made her way using handles.

The two were working to replace a faulty battery charge/discharge unit, known as a BCDU.

The station relies on solar power but is out of direct sunlight for much of its orbit and therefore needs batteries. The BCDUs regulate the amount of charge that goes into them.

US President Donald Trump (C), Vice President Mike Pence (L), Advisor to the 

President Ivanka Trump (3rd R) and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine (2nd R) 

speak to NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir during the first 

all-woman spacewalk (AFP Photo/JIM WATSON)

The current task was announced Monday and is part of a wider mission of replacing aging nickel-hydrogen batteries with higher-capacity lithium-ion units.

Artemis

The US sent its first female astronaut into space in 1983, when Sally Ride took part in the seventh space shuttle mission, and has now had more women astronauts than any other country.

But the first woman in space was Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in 1963, followed by compatriot Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982, who was also the first woman spacewalker two years later.

NASA acting associate administrator Ken Bowersox said he hoped that an all-female spacewalk would soon be a "routine" matter that would not require celebration.

Asked why it had taken so long -- Meir is the 14th US woman spacewalker -- he said men's added height provided an advantage.

"There have been a lot of spacewalks where very tall men were the ones that were able to do the jobs because they were able to reach and do things a little bit more easily," he said.

Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris said the spacewalk was more than historic.

"It's a reminder that for women, even the sky doesn't have to be the limit," she tweeted.

NASA plans to return to the Moon by 2024 for the first time since the Apollo landings of 1969-1972. The new mission is named Artemis, after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology.

The mission will likely see the first woman set foot on the lunar surface, perhaps as part of a male-female combination, as the space agency looks ahead to a crewed Mars expedition in the 2030s.

Riyadh-based airline to recruit Saudi women as co-pilots

Yahoo – AFP, September 13, 2018

Women are not legally barred from working in Saudi Arabia's aviation sector, but
until now they have never served as co-pilots and jobs as flight attendants have
largely been held by female foreign workers (AFP Photo/FAYEZ NURELDINE)

Riyadh (AFP) - Riyadh-based carrier Flynas has announced plans to recruit Saudi women to work as co-pilots and flight attendants for the first time, just months after the kingdom lifted a decades-long ban on female motorists.

Saudi Arabia in June ended a longstanding ban on women driving cars as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seeks to improve women's participation in the workforce.

Women are not legally barred from working in the aviation sector, but jobs as flight attendants with Saudi carriers have largely been held by female foreign workers from countries such as the Philippines.

Nearly 1,000 Saudi women have applied for co-pilot positions with Flynas in the past 24 hours, a spokesman for the airline told AFP on Thursday, as the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom relaxes gender restrictions amid the far-reaching liberalisation drive.

"Flynas is keen to empower Saudi women to play an important role in the kingdom's transformation," the low-cost carrier said Wednesday in its call for applications.

"Women... are an essential part of the airline's success."

The recruitment drive comes just days after Flyadeal, another low-cost Saudi carrier, began posting jobs for Saudi women to work as flight attendants.

Despite being allowed to drive cars, women still require permission from their fathers, husbands or other male relatives to travel and to get married under the kingdom's strict guardianship system.

Women pilots fly against cockpit prejudices

Yahoo – AFP, Sonia WOLF, 19 July 2018

EasyJet wants 20 percent of its new cadet pilots to be women by 2020

When a stricken Southwest Airlines jet was expertly landed after an emergency descent in April, saving 148 lives, it was a surprise to some that a woman was at the controls.

Role models remain few and far between for women wanting to enter the cockpit, rather than serve the onboard drinks, despite a huge shortage of pilots worldwide.

"So often we're shown men as pilots, and women as cabin crew. This could be sending a message to young girls that if they want to work in aviation, it can't be as a pilot," according to the British Airline Pilots' Association.

But things are finally starting to change and a few airlines are trying to redress the gender imbalance.

Europe's biggest budget carrier easyJet, under an initiative named after pioneer aviator Amy Johnson, wants 20 percent of its new cadet pilots to be women by 2020.

Today, just three percent of professional pilots worldwide are women, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

The UN agency estimates that passenger numbers will double over the next 20 years, and that airlines will need to recruit 620,000 pilots to keep up with the demand.

Tammie Jo Shults is one of those few women.

Shults, one of the first female fighter pilots for the US Navy, performed heroics in safely bringing down her Southwest Boeing 737 after an engine blowout.

One passenger died in the incident.

'Top Gun' machismo

According to retired captain Kathy McCullough, "having someone in the spotlight who's a lady who does a great job just points out that it can happen and does happen and isn't really that much of a surprise".

Just over 5 percent of the global total of pilots are women

Nevertheless, McCullough said after Shults hit the headlines that her generation of female pilots were still waiting to pass the baton to another.

"Until we reach a tipping point, which is supposedly 20 percent, I don't think we'll see much in the way of a change," she told National Public Radio.

The "Top Gun" machismo attached to aviation runs deep.

Neither does commercial flying lend itself to a work-family balance, giving organisations such as the ICAO and the International Society of Women Airline Pilots an uphill challenge to entice more women into the profession.

The society says just over 7,400 pilots flying for commercial airlines are female, or 5.2 percent of the global total.

United ranks best with 7.4 percent. Ironically Southwest, Shults's employer, has just 3.6 percent.

It is not just employment practices that the International Society of Women Airline Pilots has to confront but passenger prejudices as well, according to former chairwoman Liz Jennings Clark.

Mistaken for cabin crew

A captain with Dutch low-cost carrier Transavia, 55-year-old Clark likes when possible to come out of the cockpit and say goodbye to her passengers at the end of a flight.

But she said that many still hand their litter to her, mistaking her for cabin crew.

Girls who want to grow up as pilots still lack role models, agreed Sophie Coppin, diversity officer at the French Civil Aviation University in Toulouse.

A few airlines are trying to redress the gender imbalance as more women become pilots

Among both students and their parents, "there is a conscious or unconscious suppression" of the idea of women as aviators, she said.

About 15 percent of the student pilots at the French university are women. Double that figure are training as air traffic controllers, another sector suffering an acute shortage of entrants.

There has, at least, been some progress since 1979 when Shults, 56, was at high school and attended a careers lecture on aviation by a retired colonel.

The Southwest pilot said she was the only girl in the class, and he started by asking her if she was lost.

"I mustered up the courage to assure him I was not and that I was interested in flying," she wrote in a book about female military aviators.

"He allowed me to stay, but assured me there were no professional women pilots."

EasyJet wants 20 percent of its new cadet pilots to be women by 2020

Just over 5 percent of the global total of pilots are women

A few airlines are trying to redress the gender imbalance as more women become pilots.