Flight Engineer Berutawit Mekuria

Berutawit Mekuria, 27, is a flight engineer with Ethiopian Airlines. She qualified to train as an engineer by attaining the required A grades in Physics, Maths and English after completing her 12th grade.

Her teachers discouraged her from taking the course, warning that engineering could be physically challenging. But she went ahead and joined the two-year programme, the only female in a class of 22 students drawn from all parts of Africa. She has now been working with Ethiopian Airlines for the last five years.

“When I first started working,” Berutawit says, “the bosses tended to rely more on my male colleagues, even though we were trained in exactly the same way. I had to work extra hard to prove that I was just as capable as the men.”
Ethiopian Airlines currently employs 2,000 male and nine female engineers, and 400 male and five female pilots.

Berutawit was elected vice secretary of her union, the Transport and Communication Workers’ Trade Unions Industrial Federation, last year. Her role in that position has not only been challenging, but has also given her an insight into the level of ignorance among women workers about the role of the union in protecting all employees, regardless of gender. “I would like to see more women employed in Ethiopian Airlines, and more trade union education for them,” she says.