Editing Flight attendant (section)

==Unions==
Flight attendant [[Trade union|unions]] were formed, beginning at United Airlines in the 1940s, to negotiate improvements in pay, benefits and working conditions.<ref>From Skygirl to Flight Attendant, Women and the Making of a Union by Georgia Panter Nielsen, ILR Press/Cornell, Ithaca, New York (1982){{ISBN|978-0-87546-093-2}}</ref> Those unions would later challenge what they perceived as [[Sexism|sexist]] [[stereotype]]s and unfair work practices such as age limits, size limits, limitations on marriage, and prohibition of pregnancy. Many of these limitations have been lifted by judicial mandates. The largest flight attendants' union is the [[Association of Flight Attendants]], representing nearly 60,000 flight attendants at 19 airlines within the US.<ref name="Association of Flight Attendants">{{cite web|title=Association of Flight Attendants – About AFA|url=http://www.afacwa.org/about_afa|access-date=25 January 2014|archive-date=4 August 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230804044543/https://www.afacwa.org/about_afa|url-status=live}}</ref>

The [[Association of Professional Flight Attendants]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://apfa.org/|title=Association of Professional Flight Attendants – Home|access-date=9 December 2016|archive-date=21 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161221000012/https://apfa.org/|url-status=live}}</ref> represents the flight attendants of American Airlines, the world's largest carrier. APFA is the largest independent flight attendant union in the world.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://hub.aa.com/en/nr/pressrelease/apfa-nations-largest-independent-flight-attendant-union-calls-for-approval-of-oneworlds-immunity-application|title=Newsroom – Home – American Airlines Group, Inc.|access-date=9 December 2016|archive-date=4 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304093432/http://hub.aa.com/en/nr/pressrelease/apfa-nations-largest-independent-flight-attendant-union-calls-for-approval-of-oneworlds-immunity-application}}</ref>

In the UK, cabin crew can be represented by either Cabin Crew '89, or the much larger and more powerful [[Transport and General Workers' Union]].

In Australia, flight attendants are represented by the [[Flight Attendants' Association of Australia]] (FAAA). There are two divisions: one for international crews ([[flight length|long-haul]]) and one for domestic crews (short-haul).

In New Zealand, flight attendants can be represented by either the [[Flight Attendants and Related Services Association]] (FARSA) or by the [[Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union]] (EPMU).

In Canada, flight attendants are represented by either the [[Canadian Union of Public Employees]] (CUPE) or by the Canadian Flight Attendants Union (CFAU).

===Discrimination===
Originally female flight attendants were required to be single upon hiring, and were fired if they got married, exceeded weight regulations, or reached age 32 or 35 depending on the airline.<ref name="femininityinflight.com"/> In the 1970s, the group Stewardesses for Women's Rights protested sexist advertising and company discrimination, and brought many cases to court. In 1964, United States President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] signed the Civil Rights Act into law which prohibited sex discrimination and led to the creation of the [[Equal Employment Opportunity Commission]] in 1968. The EEOC ruled that sex was not a bona fide occupational requirement to be a flight attendant. For flight attendants, this meant that they had an official governing body to report offences to and allowed them to successfully challenge age ceiling and marriage bans in relation to their effectiveness as employees.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants|last=Barry|first=Kathleen|publisher=Duke University|year=2007|location=Durham, NC|pages=128–129}}</ref>

In 1968, the EEOC declared age restrictions on flight attendants' employment to be illegal sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.<ref name="K Barry"/> The restriction of hiring only women was lifted at all airlines in 1971 due to the decisive court case of ''Diaz v. Pan Am''.<ref name="genders1" /> The no-marriage rule was eliminated throughout the US airline industry by the 1980s.<ref name="nytimes1986" /> The last such broad categorical discrimination, the weight restrictions,<ref name="quindlen1993" /> were relaxed in the 1990s through litigation and negotiations.<ref name="nytimes1991" /> By the end of the 1970s, the term ''stewardess'' had generally been replaced by the [[Gender neutrality in English|gender-neutral]] alternative ''flight attendant''. Also, during the 1980s and 1990s, more men were allowed to apply as flight attendants, helping to create more usage of this term. More recently the term ''cabin crew'' or ''cabin staff'' has begun to replace 'flight attendants' in some parts of the world, because of the term's recognition of their role as members of the crew.