Women in Parking A life less ordinary Mandy Hickson was the second woman to fly a GR4 Tornado jet on the frontline. She is now a motivational speaker, a published author, and recently hosted a webinar for the BPAs Women in Parking network. Louise Parfitt chats to her about serving in Iraq, her inspirations, and shaking off imposter syndrome I f there was someone at the urinal, Id shout Im behind you! Mandy Hickson is recalling her first tour of duty as a fighter pilot in 1999. When she arrived at the RAF base in Iraq, she discovered there was no separate toilet for women because there had never been a female pilot on the squadron. There were other issues to confront: having to wear mens long johns (they cut into your hips) and seeing, on her first day, that all the screensavers on the computers in the junior pilots room featured scantily clad women. Obviously, on day two, they were changed to near-naked men, she laughs. Funnily enough, on day three they were all landscapes. Underwear and urinals aside, I wonder how it felt to be a woman going into what had been a mans world. I am sure you have seen in parking that the more women that come in, the more it becomes an appealing career, Hickson says. Jo Salter now a good friend of Hickson was the first female frontline fast-jet pilot in the air force, after the rules were changed in 1992 to allow women to fly jet aircraft in combat situations. Hickson was the second. I talk about imposter syndrome a lot, because, yes, I definitely had it, Hickson says. Not that I recognised it as such then, but I found out that I had been taken on as a test case basically to see how far Id get before I failed. That planted a seed of doubt. I pretended I was fine certainly I dont think my colleagues at the time knew I had struggles but I had my demons, wondering if I was good enough. On one mission that Hickson was leading, they were engaged by a surface-to-air missile. She was fine while up in the air, but suffered afterwards. The self-doubt hit me like a train, she explains. But you know what, we all have it. Yes, I was a fast-jet pilot. Yes, Ive been a public speaker for 10 years. But guess what? I still have self-doubt. Look for the evidence When people especially women ask her how to manage feelings of being an imposter, she asks them to look for the evidence. She tells me about one woman from the fire service who told Hickson she felt like shed been brought in as the token black woman. I said to her, why, is it because you are no good at your job? She replied, quite affronted, no, I am really great at my job, as good as, if not better than, the men. I told her, well theres your evidence then. Every time you hear that negative I talk about imposter syndrome a voice, be that sarcastic person like me who asks to see the evidence. It stops you doubting yourself so much. I wonder if Hickson had any emotional or mental coping strategies she used when going into combat, to help overcome any pre-flight nerves. Its an interesting one, because although you are aware of how incredibly dangerous it is we all had friends and colleagues who died while we were out there you are not scared of flying. I was fearful of letting my team down or doing something wrong, but not of actually getting up there. She compares it to playing a sport you are passionate about, and training and training and training, until you finally make it to the first team. You want to do it because you have been aiming for it your whole life, she says. It was the same for me and flying Tornados: its what I wanted to do; its what I had trained to do. 34 britishparking.co.uk PN March 2022 pp34-35 Mandy Hickson.indd 34 22/02/2022 14:58