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Women and Minorities Appear to Face Unique Challenges to Becoming Pilots

• Focus groups indicated that female and minority officers have fewer external influences to become pilots and face difficulties adapting to the dominant culture in UPT.

Minority and Female Candidates Have Relatively High Attrition Due to Flying Performance

• Data confirm that female and minority candidates are at higher risk for attrition in UPT, stemming from eliminations due to flying performance.

Minority and Female Representation Among UPT Graduates Would Be Low Even If All Groups Had Similar Attrition Levels

• In a hypothetical counterfactual scenario in which all groups had the same attrition rates, representation among graduates changed by less than 1 percentage point for each group.

Candidate Characteristics Could Account for Higher Attrition Among Female and Black Candidates

• Attrition for female and black candidates was no higher than those for male and white candidates with similar characteristics, but attrition rates for Hispanic and Asian candidates were significantly higher than that for similar white candidates.

More Information Is Needed in Several Areas

• A full understanding of demographic differences in UPT attrition requires more specific information on what occurs during training, as well as information on the characteristics of USAFA graduates (who were not assessed by PCSM during the time period covered in our data).