Women have been part of aviation history since its beginning, though their contributions often receive less attention than those of their male colleagues. Women have defied gravity and societal expectations to take to the skies with courage, determination, and skill since the dawn of aviation. In this article, we’re going to look closely at two groups of women who took to the skies in the last century with interesting names: The Whirly-Girls and The Flying Seven.
The Whirly-Girls
Jean Ross Howard Phelan was an American woman working as an Administrative Aide when she convinced her supervisor to allow her to train to be a helicopter pilot at Bell Helicopter School in Fort Worth, Texas in 1954. While getting her rating, Lawrence Bell (founder of the Bell Aircraft Corporation) affectionately referred to Phelan as a “Whirly-Girl”. In 1955, Phelan was looking to start an international organization for female helicopter pilots to share information and friendship. She called this organization The Whirly-Girls in honour of Mr. Bell. The twelve other women who had their helicopter rating at the time joined her and they started meeting in April 1955 for annual “Hoverings.”
Their logo, a Bell 47 Helicopter with lips and eyes, is based on a recruitment performance by the
U.S. Air Force in the 1950s in which four helicopters would do a “square dance” in the sky. The “girl” helicopters had a bleached mop as “hair”, painted lips and eyelashes. The logo is a stylized version of this helicopter
Each Whirly-Girl gets a number. Initially, these numbers corresponded to the order in which the woman received their helicopter ratings – for example, Jean Phelan is WG-13. Now though, you get a number when you officially join the Whirly-Girls. The Whirly-Girls are still active and have 1,700 current members from 44 different countries. They continue to offer scholarships, training and support to women helicopter pilots and are dedicated to their advancement.
The Flying Seven
The Flying Seven were another aviation association for women, but this was an early group of Canadian aviatrixes. The Flying Seven was organized in Vancouver in 1937 by a group of women wanting to encourage other girls to become pilots, keep close with Canadian women who were flying and form a trade organization of sorts to protect their interests within the field of aviation. They decided to inaugurate their organization through a dawn to dusk patrol in the skies of Vancouver, wherein the members (Elianne Roberge, Margaret Fane, Betsy Flaherty, Mrs. Frank Gilbert, Tosca Trasolini, Jean Pike, and Rolie Moore) took 25-minute shifts in relay from dawn to dusk.
The organization grew from there. The only requirements to join were to be Canadian, a woman, and to hold a license from the Department of Transportation. Many of the women who joined the organization went on to get their commercial licenses or became stunt pilots. One of the inaugural members, Margaret Fane, got her commercial license at 21 in Edmonton, AB, the first women in Western Canada to do so. It is hard to say how long the organization lasted, but it made its mark on Canadian flight history by showing that women belong in the air.
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