| During the twentieth century, women's aviation organizations created a place for women to share experiences and advice, pool their financial resources, and push for additional opportunities for women in aviation. Between 1929 and 1955, three organizations formed to serve these ends, including the Ninety-Nines (99s), the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), and the Whirly-Girls. With the help of dynamic leaders like Amelia Earhart, Jacqueline Cochran, and Jean Ross Howard Phelan and loyal members like Dr. Dora Dougherty Strother and Marty Martin Wyall, these organizations developed both the popularity and the resilience to maintain their numbers and continue their activities into the twenty-first century. Because of the bonds of camaraderie formed through individual relationships and group influence, the unity created by unique women's aviation dress and flying songs, and collective resistance to sex-based discrimination, women used aviation organizations to construct their own culture to meet the needs of women pilots. |
