International Women's Day - Female Participation in drone and STEM industries

From what I know, International Women's Day is linked historically to workplace gender equity. This day should provoke thoughts about the status of gender representation in all industries and professions. So, this year I thought more closely about the relative level of female drone users in Canada. 

All I knew for certain was the assumption that I had that there must be considerably less female drone pilots in Canada than male. I also knew that I was roughly familiar with the amount of drone pilots in Canada in terms of certification levels.

So was my assumption right? Well, I am only able to answer this because of some recent federal statistics. A 2021 Transport Canada Study titled "Public opinion research study on drone users’ familiarity with the new rules & the general public’s social acceptance of drones", contains a section on drone usage demographics. 

Rather amazingly, it states 19% of males and 7% of females fly drones in Canada. Generally, this is a crazy amount of people that say that they fly drones, nearly 1 in every 6 people you ask. It appears that a greater percentage of the population in Canada are drone users compared to the percentage of the population that works in the technology industry. According to the data provided, 14% of Canadians have used drones, while the percentage of the population that works in the technology industry is around 5%. However, it's important to note that these two figures are not directly comparable since they are measuring different things - drone use as a (mostly) recreational activity versus employment in the technology industry.

Nevertheless, these coarse drone usage statistics may be relevant to the topic of gender equity in emerging technologies in Canada and America. 

In general, there is a gender gap in the participation of women in emerging technologies, including drone technology, in both Canada and the United States. Women are often underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, and this underrepresentation extends to the emerging technologies that are driving the growth of many industries.

In Canada, there have been efforts to encourage women's participation in STEM fields through various initiatives and programs, but women remain underrepresented in these fields. According to a report by the Canadian government, women accounted for only 22% of STEM degrees awarded in Canada in 2016. Similarly, a report by the Information and Communications Technology Council found that women represent only 25% of the ICT workforce in Canada.

In the United States, women are also underrepresented in STEM fields, including emerging technologies like drone technology. According to a report by the National Science Foundation, women earned only 35% of all undergraduate degrees in STEM fields in 2017. Similarly, a report by the National Center for Women and Information Technology found that women held only 26% of all computing-related occupations in the United States in 2019.

So, it appears that female participation in drone use in Canada is lower than male participation, with only 7% of females flying drones compared to 19% of males. This is consistent with broader trends in technology and STEM fields, where women are underrepresented. In Canada, women represent only 23% of workers in the technology industry, while in the United States, women hold only 24% of computing jobs and make up only 12% of engineers in the aerospace and defense industries.

Females make up about 8% of drone pilots in the US as reported in the 2022 FAA Airmen statistics. There is an awesome global organization based in the US called Women Who Drone and one of their writers noted that 8% is a notable increase from the previous set of statistics. However, they also note that the aviation industry has long been male dominated. Personally, I don't agree with this perspective because it lumps the drone user community into the aviation industry.

Going back to the 2021 Transport Canada Study, over 80% of drone users do not have an aviation background. Additionally, commercial and recreational drone use has only existed in earnest for about fifteen years whereas the aviation industry has existed for over a century. Given this context, there doesn't seem to be any need for women to have to make slow progress in participation in drone usage because the aviation industry is historically male dominated.

Personally, I find these facts and figures really frustrating now that I know more about them. Do you? I would love to see situation completely change and I don't know why it can't happen rather quickly. To borrow a term from the field of international development, I think that what is needed is a leapfrog strategy. Following such a strategy can theoretically allow underdeveloped states to skip phases of development. For example, going from a primarily agricultural economy to a service economy without first developing into an industrial one.

Female participation in the drone community should be able to leapfrog from historical levels because these levels, as they are linked to the aviation industry, really do not yet exist. In my opinion, they should look more like the levels of female smartphone usage and ownership. Smartphones and commercial and recreational drones have been around for about the same time. While males do own and use smartphones more, it is only by about 20% more globally  as compared to male drone usage being over 1100% more than female usage in North America.

How to get female drone ownership and usage to look more like female smartphone ownership and usage is beyond this little drone business blog post. Though, I think there needs to be a cultural shift that gets women to associate drones more with smartphones and other emerging tech with similarly high female adoption rates. What does not help is the lack of attention given by the government, in Canada at least, to gender in the drone community. For example, another government publication relevant to this discussion is Transport Canada's drone strategy to 2025. It is supposed to be a forward looking, first of its kind document and yet the only mention of gender is a bullet point about supporting the use of inclusive gender-neutral terminology (RPAS).  As the policy document that is supposed to set Transport Canada's strategic vision for drones, it is very disappointing in this regard. 

A more obvious and developed  avenue for a cultural shift is social media messaging and awareness. There are also great organizations and groups out there like Women Who Drone, Women and Drones, various local Facebook groups and thousands of female drone pilot pages on all platforms that we can choose to search out, like, follow, and support. A current favourite of ours is Vanessa from Toronto. We follow her on Instagram, she has her advanced operations certification and some amazing content follow her @v.s.film. 

Well, I guess we would also be remised not to plug ourselves @skybug_ds and what we can do to encourage and facilitate more women like Vanessa to not only use drones but to get certified even for advanced operations. We of course are affiliated with Coastal Drone Co as they offer the absolute best quality of online certification prep courses as well as in person training and flight reviews. This area of certification and regulations is certainly where drones and aviation are more comparable. It is really only with a quality training establishment like Coastal Drone that this unavoidable reality of drone usage can be most easily navigated and therefore, drones made the most readily accessibly to all including all genders. 

We really hope you liked this post. Our business is a mixed gender partnership and we are certainly happy that we did the research into this topic on the occasion of International Women's day. Thanks for reading.