Airlines persisted in hiring only female flight attendants throughout the 1960s. In 1968, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that sex could not be a bona fide occupational qualification of being a flight attendant.
The BFOQ ruling came on February 23, 1968. Airline stewardesses had been among the first to file sex discrimination complaints after the creation of the EEOC, but it took several years for the EEOC to issue its ruling on female flight attendants.
Stewardess Requirements: No Men, No Marriage
Airlines wanted stewardesses – that is, women only – and they wanted the women to be young and single. Most stewardesses were fired or grounded when they got married or turned a certain age, usually 32 or 35.
In 1965, the EEOC responded to a Northwest Airlines stewardess who was terminated when she got married. Aileen Hernandez, later a president of the National Organization for Women, was a member of the EEOC when it found “reasonable cause” that Northwest had discriminated against women by having a marriage ban for women but not men. After this official word from a government agency, the flight attendant took her case to court.
Bona Fide Occupational Qualification?
However, the airlines asked for a BFOQ exception: they wanted “being female” declared a job qualification of being a flight attendant. The EEOC ruled in November 1966 that being female was not a BFOQ, but a judge prevented the commission from releasing this ruling. The airlines protested that the 1966 BFOQ ruling would be improper because Aileen Hernandez had been elected to the board of the newly formed NOW. However, she also submitted her resignation from the EEOC before she was elected as a NOW officer.
Finally, with new commissioners and years after the original stewardess complaints, the EEOC issued a BFOQ ruling on female flight attendants in February 1968. Being female was not a BFOQ for the position of flight attendant.