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THE FLAG: GENDER AND THE PROJECTION OF NATIONAL PROGRESS THROUGH GLOBAL AIR TRAVEL, 1920-1960 A Dissertation Presented to The Academic Faculty By Emily Katherine Gibson In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in History and Sociology of Technology and Science Georgia Institute of Technology May 2017 Copyright © Emily Katherine Gibson 2017 FLYING THE FLAG: GENDER AND THE PROJECTION OF NATIONAL PROGRESS THROUGH GLOBAL AIR TRAVEL, 1920-1960 Approved by: Dr. John Krige, Advisor Dr. Steve Usselman School of History and Sociology School of History and Sociology Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Laura Bier Dr. Margaret Weitekamp School of History and Sociology Department of Space History Georgia Institute of Technology National Air and Space Museum Dr. Doug Flamming School of History and Sociology Date Approved: December 15, 2016 Georgia Institute of Technology ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As I sit in my office at the National Air and Space Museum typing these words and thinking about all of the different and better ways I could’ve written this dissertation, I can’t help but feel very, very lucky. I doubt that my space-obsessed younger self would’ve ever believed that I’d someday get to sit on the third floor of the coolest aerospace museum in the world and finish writing my dissertation on the history of women and commercial aviation. I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to spend my last year of graduate school on fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum. I would like to thank the museum, my fellowship supervisor Bob Van der Linden, and the Aeronautics department. I am very thankful for your gracious responses to my constant stream of queries. I would like to especially thank the newest member of the Aero department Jenifer Van Vleck. Your work on Pan Am has served as a model for my own and I greatly appreciate that you took the time in the midst of your first week at the museum to read and give me useful feedback on my Pan Am chapter. I would also like to express my gratitude to the curators of the Space History department. You welcomed me to the museum when I served as an intern in the department two years ago and have been amazingly encouraging of my work ever since. My daily lunch conversations with many of you have brought me much joy and sanity over the past few months. I am especially grateful to Paul Ceruzzi who has volunteered to read versions of my work and has lent me many books and given me many pep talks. I would also like to thank David DeVorkin and iii Roger Launius for their invaluable professional advice as I embark on the next phase of my career. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my dissertation committee. Doug Flamming, your US history survey was my first and last teaching assistant assignment at Georgia Tech and I can’t overstate how much I learned from you about being a curious, kind, and genuinely good human being and professor. Margaret Weitekamp, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your book Right Stuff, Wrong Sex as a graduate student at UMASS and still remember my excitement when I spotted you in the audience at my very first conference presentation on women and aviation during the Society for the History of Technology meeting in 2009. I hope now, after 200+ pages and seven years, I’m getting a little closer to answering the question you posed during the Q&A. I consider myself very lucky to have been able to serve as your intern and even luckier now to have you on my dissertation committee. And to my core committee, you’ve seen me develop over the past five years of graduate school, ushering me through coursework, comprehensive exams, and now the completion of my dissertation—I can’t thank you enough for your guidance. Laura Bier, you’ve not only been an amazing personal and professional mentor, but your work on Egyptian feminism has been inspirational to me in my own thinking about gender and history. Steve Usselman, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would know nothing about business or organizational history without your guidance. I was extremely challenged by your business history course and what I learned in that class has deeply shaped the intellectual trajectory of my dissertation. I also greatly admire your dedication to helping me become a better writer and am extremely grateful for the many hours iv you’ve put into line editing this text. I’m sorry for my seemingly pathological reliance on the em dash—but I contend it has its value! Finally, I’d like to thank my advisor John Krige. You’ve mentored me since my first week at Georgia Tech and have spent countless hours helping me think through this project. You’ve been an amazing supporter of the graduate students at Georgia Tech and on numerous occasions devoted portions of your own research budget to funding graduate student research and conference travel. Without your support I would never have had the opportunity to develop what I consider the most exciting aspect of this dissertation, its global focus. Under your guidance I was able to conduct research at Air France and make connections with French scholars at the Centre Alexandre Koyré in Paris. I knew nothing about living and working in France and you devoted your personal time and resources to helping me navigate the complexities of conducting research abroad. I would also like to thank my fellow graduate students at Georgia Tech. You’ve been an amazing support system and academic community. Thank you also to the professors at Georgia Tech who have encouraged me along my path. A special thank you to LaDonna Bowen who has helped me keep on track from the perspective of institutional requirements. Finally I’d like to thank my closest friends and family. Tracy, I’m extremely grateful for your friendship and support. The thoughtful care packages that you and Genevieve have sent me over the past year have brightened my spirits beyond measure. Angel, I couldn’t ask for a better friend, sister, and colleague. I’m lucky to have you and v Jason as friends and neighbors. Lastly, I’d like to thank my mother for always encouraging me to write and my father for inspiring my interest in flight. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………...………….iii LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………...……………vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………………..viii SUMMARY……………………………………………………………………………....ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: AVIATION, GLOBAL INTERCONNECTEDNESS, AND THE TENSIONS OF MODERNITY……………………………………….1 PART I: THE BEGINNINGS OF AN INDUSTRY—THE INTERWAR PERIOD……27 CHAPTER 2: “THE GREATEST SALES ARGUMENT:” INTER-WAR WOMEN PILOTS AND THE POPULARIZATION OF COMMERCIAL AVIATION………………………………………………………………………28 CHAPTER 3: MODERN AVIATRIX AROUND THE WORLD: AVIATION AND GENDERED REPRESENTATIONS OF MODERNITY……………………………………………………………………71 3.1 Lee Ya Ching and the “Spirit of New China”..................................................75 3.2 Sabiha Gökçen and the Turkish Republic’s Modern “Woman of Tomorrow”………………………………………………………….95 PART II: GLOBAL EXPANSION—WWII TO 1960…………………………………111 CHAPTER 4: PAN AMERICAN AIRWAYS STRETCHES ITS “WINGS OVER THE WORLD:” GENDER, SERVICE, AND PUBLIC IMAGE DURING WWII………………………………………………………………...112 CHAPTER 5: “THE WORLD’S LARGEST AIRLINE:” GENDER AND THE MARKETING OF AIR FRANCE AS A NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR LATE- COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT IN WEST AFRICA…………………………..158 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION: COMMERCIAL AVIATION AND THE POSTWAR WOMAN………………...……………………………197 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………208 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 “It’s my wife that objects”……………………………………………….40 Figure 2.2 “And just think of the ducky clothes you could wear”…………………..48 Figure 3.1 Lee Ya-Ching’s Flight Training, Geneva………………………………..79 Figure 3.2 Lee Ya-Ching Boeing School of Aeronautics…………………………...81 Figure 3.3 Lee Ya-Ching, qipao and plane………………………………………….86 Figure 3.5 Lee Ya-Ching and Spirit of New China………………………………….93 Figure 3.6 Sabiha Gökçen, Glider flight school…………………………………....103 Figure 3.7 Sabiha Gökçen, Ankara……………………...........................................105 Figure 3.8 Sabiha Gökçen in military flight uniform………………………………106 Figure 5.1 Air France’s first class of air hostesses…………………………………183 Figure 5.2 “These travel agents…”………………………………………………...192 Figure 5.3 “If I don’t have to wait to long at my hairdresser’s”..………………….195 Figure 6.1 Air Afrique, “Vacances au Sénégal”………………………………...…205 Figure 6.2 Air Afrique’s first air hostesses………………………………………...206 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS NASM National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC IWASM International Women’s Air and Space Museum, Cleveland, OH PSD Passenger Services Department, Pan American Airways ix SUMMARY This dissertation uses a feminist analytical lens to study questions of power and difference in the gendered and racial dynamics of marketing strategies, public relations, and employment within the aviation industry from 1920-1960. Demonstrating that gendered and racial business strategies and views of technology did not develop separately from the aviation industry, this work argues that understanding modern meanings and patterns of commercial air travel requires an examination of how notions of gender, race, and international development determined the course of commercial aviation’s development. My dissertation is divided into two parts that correspond to two main periods in the history of aviation: the inter-war period formation of major commercial aviation firms and the WWII/immediate post-war period of global expansion and the “jet age.” The first section argues that women occupied a unique role in commercial aviation’s growth as a state project and symbol of national modernity during the inter-war period, while they also challenged the limits of those proscribed roles. This section examines women as symbols of domestication for the technology of flight in the United States, China, and Turkey.