As the space race reached a fever pitch 40 years ago, an unheralded employment rights pioneer named Celio Diaz Jr. held fast to a dream. He didn't endeavor to set foot on the lunar surface, but his ambition was still difficult to realize in 1967. Diaz wanted to be a flight attendant.
Today, when in-flight opulence is limited to perusing the SkyMall catalog while sipping your one complimentary can of Sierra Mist, Diaz's aspiration understandably elicits a shrug. In 1967, however, air travel held more allure. Being a flight attendant meant serving cocktails to captains of industry and chain-smoking celebrities aboard jetliners destined for exotic locales.
Being a flight attendant in 1967 also meant being a woman -- specifically a young, pert and unmarried woman. Though men exclusively served as flight stewards at the dawn of commercial aviation, by the 1950s all the major airlines reinvented the occupation as an exclusively female domain. Targeting businessmen as their core customer base, many airlines established academies where they would train stewardesses to walk that fine line between mini-skirt-clad siren and nurturing potential wife. Blanching at the very notion that a man might elect to do a job they'd made synonymous with femininity, airline managers unequivocally stated that men need not apply.
Nonetheless, Diaz, a married father of two from Miami, tried to get a job as a flight attendant with Pan American World Airways. Title VII, part of 1964's landmark Civil Rights Act that forbade employment discrimination on the basis of gender (as well as race, religion and national origin), bolstered Diaz's confidence that Pan Am would at least consider his second job application in 1967. When they again refused, Diaz brought the airline to court.
Through four years of legal proceedings, Pan Am, supported by its fellow airlines, steadfastly asserted that being female was a "bona fide occupational qualification" for the job. A barrage of newspaper articles likewise expressed incredulity at the idea of "male stewardesses." Of course, the airline had a tough time proving that men could not actually do the job.
With little else at its disposal, Pan Am relied on prejudices against gay and effeminate men to justify its discrimination. The airline's lawyers laid out a doozy of a Catch-22. They argued that, on the one hand, real men would prove too masculine to provide the nurturing, maternal essence of flight attending. On the other hand, the men who could excel at the job would be effeminate and therefore unacceptable.
