That’s a great question. Actually its only about 5-8% of men who are colour blind, so that’s still 92-95% of the male population that have colour vision and can be pilots!
But you are right, the incidence of colourblinded-ness in men is much higher than in women – only about 0,5% of women are affected.
There are pretty strict tests for pilots in order for them to get a license to fly a plane and one of those is a colour test. Its really important to be able to read the lights on the instrument panel and navigation lights etc – I think I would be a little nervous If I was hundreds of metres in the air with a pilot that could not distinguish the stop from go button 😉
I think Kate has the biological science pretty much covered — the reason for there being more men who are pilots is mostly a question for SOCIAL scientists.
It’s the same sort of question as, ‘Why are most nurses women?’ and ‘Why are most taxi drivers men?’ You’ll find that different people will give you different answers, and get very emotional about their answer…
Hi findingnemo,
That’s a great question. Actually its only about 5-8% of men who are colour blind, so that’s still 92-95% of the male population that have colour vision and can be pilots!
But you are right, the incidence of colourblinded-ness in men is much higher than in women – only about 0,5% of women are affected.
There are pretty strict tests for pilots in order for them to get a license to fly a plane and one of those is a colour test. Its really important to be able to read the lights on the instrument panel and navigation lights etc – I think I would be a little nervous If I was hundreds of metres in the air with a pilot that could not distinguish the stop from go button 😉
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Hi findingnemo,
I think Kate has the biological science pretty much covered — the reason for there being more men who are pilots is mostly a question for SOCIAL scientists.
It’s the same sort of question as, ‘Why are most nurses women?’ and ‘Why are most taxi drivers men?’ You’ll find that different people will give you different answers, and get very emotional about their answer…
0