Reaction
to a court ruling on weight criteria for India’s flight
attendants forgets to mention men
 There are
male flight attendants aboard Air India and Indian Airlines that are
so fat that they have got stuck in the aircraft toilets. And that
seems to be fine with the airlines. But if you’re a woman, you
had better watch what you eat – and then not eat it.
Widespread
publicity has been given to a recent judgment of the Delhi High Court
grounding airline staff who do not meet weight criteria, bringing
into focus a gamut of issues - fat versus fitness, discrimination
against air hostesses, and mindsets trapped in notions of glamour and
beauty in this service industry.
Flight attendants are still
called air hostesses in India, which hasn’t get got used to the
gender-neutral counterpart used in the west, and it shows. Stripped
of the gloss, women in the industry have had to prove their
competence despite their age, not winning the right to fly until age
58 - like their male counterparts - until 2002.
Indian
Airlines, the country’s state-owned domestic airline, and Air
India, its international flag carrier, were merged in 2007 for
corporate purposes but not reflagged7, along with Indian Air
subsidiary Alliance Air, which became India Air Regional. The
complete transition to the National Aviation Company of India Ltd.,
under which the merged airlines now operate, will obviously take more
time. Despite the new logo and the common nomenclature of 'Air
India', service conditions of staff of both airlines are separate and
not equal. Representatives of Air India say staff of Indian Airlines
enjoy better and less gender-discriminatory service conditions. In
the former, they are already fighting for equality in promotions
despite the opposition of male cabin crew.
The
judgment, by Justices A.K. Sikri and J.R. Midha, is clearly in favour
of fitness over fat, stating that there is no scope for any debate on
overweight people and that “it is universally accepted that
overweight people have a tendency to suffer from diseases.” The
judges dismissed a batch of petitions filed by air hostesses and
cabin crew of Indian Airlines, who were grounded for weighing more
than the limits fixed by the airlines.
As of February, at
least 43 of the 2,500-odd flight attendants of Air India, Indian
Airlines and Alliance Air had been grounded as overweight, according
to a reply given by Civil Aviation minister Praful Patel in response
to a question in Parliament posed by MP Rajya Sabhai. Cabin crew
undergo periodic medical check-ups and can resume flight duties when
they regain their permissible weight limits, the minister added.
Fitness is obviously an extremely important criteria in an
industry where a sudden emergency could require enormous reserves of
strength and energy. However, the issue is clearly not that simple,
according to staffers of Air India and Indian Airlines, lawyers, and
women's rights activists. Whether weight can be a sole criterion for
fitness is hardly disputable, underscored by the recent tragic death
of an Air India flight purser as well as several examples of male
cabin crew who may be below the prescribed weight limit, but who may
be diabetic, hypertensive or even have heart problems. While no one
disputes the need to maintain some fitness conditions, the question
is whether the fitness criteria are reasonable and whether these are
applicable across the board to all airlines flying staff - the air
hostesses and the male cabin crew.
"The cabin crew, male
and female, deal with death-defying circumstances and fitness is
important. But is weight the only measure of fitness?" asked
Nandita Gandhi of Akshara, a women's research centre. Jyothi
Mhapsekar of Stree Mukti Sanghatana, a women's organisation. "No
one is opposed to fitness but are men also governed by the same
criteria and, most important, what about the captain? Are there
weight restrictions for (male) cabin crew?"
The answer is
an emphatic no. Air India (which, according to the MP’s
response, has grounded 16 air hostesses), does not ground male cabin
crew who are overweight. Advocate Anand Grover, who filed in the
Bombay High Court against Air India for grounding an air hostess,
Jennifer Chavan, in 2003, stated that "while Indian Airlines
applied its weight criteria across the board, Air India is very
clearly discriminatory towards its women staff".
The air
hostess's case, which has meandered through various orders, notices
of motion and contempt petitions against the airline for several
years, demonstrates both the discriminatory aspect of the issue as
well as its imperfect logic.
"In
September 2002, after a check-up, the air hostess was found
overweight and given a verbal instruction to report back after she
reached her permissible weight. She filed a petition in 2003 and was
granted permission to fly after she got her weight checked in a
hospital certified by Air India," says lawyer Susan Abraham, who
is assisting Grover in the case.
The case, which is still on,
has challenged the discrimination between male and female staff of
the airline and has also questioned whether the Body Mass Index (BMI)
is a sufficient criterion for fitness and whether other principles of
fitness should also apply.
"We have been fighting the
discrimination inherent in these medical check-ups for several years
now and have pointed out instances of men who are at least 44
kilograms excess; of male cabin crew who are so overweight that
they've got stuck in toilets... but Air India is simply not
listening," said K.V.J. Rao, general secretary of the Air India
Hostesses Association. Rao has been speaking up for his women
colleagues and points out that though male cabin crew undergoes
medical check-ups, they suffer no punitive action.
Air India
goes by a 1962 LIC chart, outdated and based on geographical criteria
for different regions of India. Besides, the airline does not provide
any specialised medical care for its staffers who are overweight,
like surgery for obesity or even a health club!
But what is
perplexing for the staffers is that the airline equates weight with
fitness, ignoring staffers who may have diabetes, heart problems or
hypertension, but who may still be within the prescribed weight, said
Valerie Fernandes, a prominent member of the Air India Executive
Hostesses Association. "I personally feel some kind of weight
restrictions are important, none of us argue against this, but we
have to examine all our working conditions and improve them,"
she added.
The
sexist biases that govern public perception of the air hostesses are
another bugbear. "I wonder whether the weight issue has
something to do with the women being seen merely as decorative
pieces," said Sandhya Gokhale, an activist of the Forum against
Oppression of Women. Progressive airlines use non-sexist terminology
to describe flying cabin crew as 'flight attendants', also ensuring
that male cabin crew perform the same tasks as their female
colleagues.
Others wonder whether the cut-throat competition
with the entry of private airlines has pushed the newly-merged Air
India and Indian Airlines to 'trim the fat', both literally and
figuratively. Having a 'leaner' crew even for long-haul flights and
enforcing policies that edge out the older or the overweight staffer
even as fewer margins are provided for corrective measures, are only
moves towards a meaner flying machine. Whether this ensures a
happier, healthier staff and better service for customers remains to
be seen.
Women’s
Feature Service
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