ENID, Okla. — When Maj. Christina Hopper was fresh out of Air Force pilot training in 2000 and was assigned to fly the F-16, she faced questions.

“I remember one of the first questions when I found out that I got F-16s, one of the simulator instructors asked me, ‘So, how do you plan to go to the bathroom in the jet?'” remembers Hopper, who today is a T-38 instructor pilot with the 5th Flying Training Squadron (FTS) at Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Oklahoma.

“I looked at him and said, ‘I don’t know, I thought the missions were short.’ And they were, but there were a lot of things to consider, like when you’re flying 10 hours across the pond over to the other side of the world, how do you do that (go to the bathroom) then?”

Looking back on just how far she and countless other women serving in the military have come in terms of acceptance and treatment, Hopper can now laugh at such perceived challenges of the past.

“It’s a funny thing, and we laugh about it, but it’s also very practical when it comes to doing your job and executing, because for the men this is a no-brainer, it’s very easy.”

That was only one issue Hopper faced as she began her career as an Air Force pilot.

“My peers and I were doing a lot of firsts, we were opening up a lot of doors,” she said. “I think because of that there was a lot of scrutiny, watching us to see how are we going to be, were we actually qualified to be there, do we deserve to be there, were we going to change the traditions, were they going to have to walk on eggshells around us?”

Slowly, over time, those questions were answered.

“This is why I feel like it is so important for females to be in the (fighter) community, because little by little they see we are qualified and competent, they see that we are capable, that we are good leaders, that we do a good job and that they’re just as happy with us being on their wing in combat as they are with any of the male fighter pilots,” Hopper said.

Making their way in the male-dominated world of military aviation is a challenge for all women Air Force pilots, said Maj. Sara Linck, executive officer of the 5th FTS. For her part, Linck said she faced different issues when she piloted massive C-5 transports.

“In the C-5 we were part of a very large crew, mostly enlisted members, and I think that brought up its own leadership challenges from being a young officer,” she said. “It’s very male-dominated.”

Not long ago, Linck was telling a male colleague about an instance where, earlier in her career, she felt she was discriminated against because of her gender. He told her there had recently been an investigation of a similar incident of discrimination at one of his previous bases.

“At that point, I thought about the challenges I had faced 18 years ago flying and, in the back of my head I thought, ‘Surely we’re past that,'” she said. “But then I heard we’re not, and maybe it’s because women haven’t spoken up for these things.”

The Air Force regularly holds mandatory training about diversity, Linck said, much of which is targeted against sexual harassment and assault. She said this training is valuable, but women in the Air Force face challenges beyond harassment and assault.

In 2015, Sheryl Sandberg, founder of Lean In, the nonprofit dedicated to the support and empowerment of women in leadership, spoke at The Pentagon and echoed the point of Linck and countless other women in the United States, urging for biases to be broken down in the military and discussing how and why leadership of women should be championed both in the military and civilian workforces.

“We don’t really talk about just the day-to-day challenges or what makes our diverse force with women great,” she said. “When I talk to the guys about some of the struggles I’ve been through, and they’re not sexual assault, they’re not the stuff we see videos on, they say ‘Wow, I never thought that the leadership challenge could be different for you being a women in charge of 17 men, than it would have been for me.'”

Capt. Courtney Vidt, a T-1 instructor pilot and flight commander in the 71st Student Squadron at Vance, said she thought the Air Force has made strides in terms of accepting women pilots.

“I don’t feel any different from the (male) counterparts,” she said. “I think that’s a stride that we’ve made. They don’t try to make me feel different. I feel very incorporated, very welcomed into the community.”

The women said they don’t want to be treated any differently from their male counterparts, but don’t want to, at the same time, lose their identity as women.

“We don’t have to give up our female selves to do the job,” Linck said. “There are things that make us different as individuals and as a gender. We’re not looking to take those things away and make us homogenous. We’re looking for ways to be ourselves but also be thoughtful about how we use that as part of the dynamic of leadership and as pilots.”

“I think we need to celebrate our differences,” Hopper said. “The goal of diversity is not diversity for diversity’s sake. The idea is that when you bring people together from different backgrounds, they have different things to offer, they have different experiences from the different lives that they’ve lived, the different areas where they’ve come from, their different socioeconomic backgrounds. Those are what define them and that’s what brings their unique gifts to the table that they have to offer.”

“If we lose those differences,” Linck said, “then it actually detracts from the group. In a certain sense you want to be treated just like one of the guys. You want to be respected as, you’re a peer and you belong there. But at the same time when we go out and I put my makeup on and I look like a girl, I want to be a girl. I want to be recognized as a female and not just one of the guys. There’s a balance there, for sure.”

Linck said when she goes out with male colleagues, she must decide what feels authentic given her career and womanhood.

“Do I want to wear this outfit I might wear when I go out with my girlfriends? Do I want to put makeup on? Do I want to look like I care about the way I look? The guys I know don’t have to think about that,” she said.

“I think it’s a good thing that we are different, that we do maintain our ability to be women while being aviators,” Vidt said.

Professionally, the women say, they want to be judged by the same standards as men.

“it’s hard when someone tells you, ‘Oh, you just got that job because you’re a woman,'” Vidt said. “No, I just got that job because I work hard.”

Women Air Force aviators don’t want “a different set of standards put on our behavior or our abilities in the aircraft,” Linck said.

Hopper, a student of Air Force history, made some history of her own early in her career when she became the first African-American female fighter pilot to fly combat missions in a major conflict, the war in Afghanistan. 

“I was thinking how far we had come, just looking at the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) and that completely segregated version of women aviators, and now we are a completely integrated force,” she said, “so we’ve come a long way. I know that we are making very positive strides toward full inclusion. I see a lot of positive things happening as we move forward into the future.”

There is more work to do, however, Hopper said.

“I think sometimes change happens very slowly,” she said. “It’s a slow process and it’s a generational process and I think there’s a process of educating the next generation about what is appropriate behavior, and as we educate them then they do a little bit better than we did, hopefully. I think we’re definitely moving in the right generation, but you still see evidence of, we still have a long way to go.”

When Hopper got her wings, she became one of only 50 female fighter pilots in the Air Force, and one of only two African-American women in the fighter community

“I looked a couple of years ago at the personnel demographics of the fighter community, and there were only 60 female fighter pilots,” Hopper said. “Now there is some attrition, with people separating, retiring and the like, but to me those are pretty dismal numbers. So I definitely see room for improvement.”

Mullin writes for the Enid, Oklahoma News & Eagle.