Why Are There So Few Female Firefighters

*** Featured Image: If Superheroes Posed Like Wonder Woman by Coelasquid/Kelly Turnbull

When I saw my professor’s name, from 35 years ago, flash on my phone I felt nervous. I remembered him as the guy who cared about his students. He was playful—I believe because he realized we were still young. I answered his call.

He wanted to talk about my newly published novel, The Fire She Fights.

Hearing his voice, I was back on the athletic field at our small college in Rhode Island. He was on the opposite team, both of us lined up with students, ready to throw out a sign for rock, paper, or scissors and chase the other team down. His voice was just as I remembered, and I immediately felt at ease. Then he dropped the bomb.

“My neighbor is a firefighter. I told him about your book, and he said, ‘I don’t believe in female firefighters’.”

My hand curled into a fist—rock. Breathe, I thought.

***

In the 1980’s there was an uptick of women entering the fire service. By the 90’s women represented 4% of career firefighters in the United States. In 2022, women still make up 4% of career firefighters. Why have the numbers not increased? It’s an exciting career, some say heroic. The pay is good, and it comes with a pension and a schedule where firefighters have free time for family or even a side gig. Why is it —40 years later— the numbers are still so low?

The argument I’ve heard most: women just aren’t strong enough to do the job.

My professor defended me. When the firefighter neighbor insisted that a female couldn’t pull him out of a fire, my professor argued, “I believe this one could, or she would die trying,” he said.

I appreciate his loyalty—and I know the truth. I wouldn’t give up my life trying to do a task I know is likely impossible. I realize I need my team to get an unconscious firefighter out—or we will both die. The fact is, there are few women or men that could rescue a downed firefighter alone. Admittedly, men are stronger than women. It’s a biological fact. Does that mean women are uncapable to do physical work?

Thousands of women perform firefighting tasks every day. I have no doubt that there are millions of women strong enough to do the job. After 21 years as a firefighter, I’m not as convinced that there are millions of men, with enough compassion, to be good firefighters. According to the NFPA fires account for 3.8 percent of fire department calls. Sixty-five percent are medical emergencies, requiring compassion—traditionally a female quality. NFPA 2022 Fire Emergency Response Stats.

To illustrate my point, I’ll use characters from my novel, The Fire She Fights, to tell the story of one true event I can’t forget.

It’s a Sunday morning and the crew at Station 7 take their places at the table for a non-traditional brunch-clutch. Ruby sets a large plate of scrambled eggs in the center of the table. Tyler retrieves warm maple syrup from the microwave and Hector stacks pancakes onto a platter with a spatula. Emergency tones, signaling a medical call, interrupt the anticipation of warm buttery, maple-soaked pancakes.

Hector whips the spatula across the room, “Son of a bitch.”

John, the captain pats his chest pocket, checking for his spectacles. Ruby and Tyler dash to the rig. Hector is last on the engine. He sits in the back seat with Ruby and slams his door. Tyler pulls Engine 7 out of the fire station and races to the address, responding to the call for difficulty breathing.

Arriving at the home John leads the crew to the door. Ruby carries in the oxygen tank. Hector follows with the medical bag over his shoulder and Tyler trails in last. A distraught young man meets them at the door and directs the crew to an upstairs bedroom.

At the top of the stairs a young mother practically throws her baby at Ruby. Ruby takes the child gently in her arms. It’s obvious that the baby hasn’t been breathing for some time and is unsavable. Seeing the woman’s need for any shred of hope in this moment, Ruby begins CPR.

An ambulance arrives and silences the siren suddenly, like a needle being scraped across a record. Hector races through the bedroom facing the front of the home and opens the window. He shouts to the hastening paramedics below, “No need to rush, it’s just a dead baby.”

Despite the attribute of compassion, required to be a good firefighter, the firefighter archetype remains—good-looking superhero— and the excuse given when our heroes behave badly: boys will be boys. I doubt Hector is who the public sees when they think of a firefighter and most certainly, they don’t see Ruby. But they should, and they must see both for change to occur.

Captain Lauren Andrade, Orange County Fire, suggests part of the reason the number of women in the fire service have remained low is because women are given the message, “You’re not welcome here.” Fire stations continue to be built without separate rest rooms for women and men. Andrade says equity will not happen until we keep them accountable.

It’s a daunting task. Can the 4% be expected keep the 96% accountable? Especially when even regular citizens are surprised to see women firefighters. Women firefighters are not Santa Claus or unicorns. We don’t need to be believed in—we need to be believed.

In response to the unchanged number of women, Los Angeles Battalion Chief and co-founder of  Equity on Fire, Kris Larson says, “It is time for inclusion… It’s harder for women because we’ve never been socialized to think we could be a firefighter… From a very young age, women are not socialized to think that this is a viable career for them.” She asserts, “Little girls need to see women who look like them in the media, on the firetruck”.

I add, little boys need to see those images. How would our world be different if “Fireman Sam” was Firefighter Sam? How would our little girls’ self-esteem change if girls were not represented in their cartoons by pink trucks with long mascara-ed eyelashes? The effect of female roles in our childrens’ cartoons have an impact not just on our little girls but on our little boys.

It gets worse as we get older. The stereotypes are carried out in movies and acted out in society. Even with strong women —imagine Wonder Woman. Now think of Superman. See him in a like-styled costume. Shoulders bare, one hip out to the side, wearing bottoms that resemble underwear, absent tights and showcasing his naked sexy legs. I wonder if, in this pose, the villains Superman fights would include sexualizing him as part of the scene. Women fight fires and perform the duties of being a firefighter while being assaulted, harassed, and at the very least, dismissed as less than.  More about Superhero gender bias. 

Some try to keep the men accountable through lawsuits. From 2008 to 2016 Chicago Fire paid out 92 million in lawsuits. After 2016 the lawsuits continued. Multiple suits and millions more paid out due to assault and gender discrimination within the Chicago Fire Department. Similar scenarios are prevalent in Boston, New York City, Los Angeles. If lawsuits have done anything, they have made the culture worse through retaliation.

Too often the one assaulted or harassed is ostracized for coming forward, rather than believed. Firemen continue to bully and abuse the women they work alongside, and they often get away with it. Imagine how many millions of dollars would have been saved if the offender had been kept accountable. The situation is the same in small departments. One small town recently made the ludicrous decision to make an arsonist the fire chief while sidelining a capable woman.

There are good guys in the mix, and we need them there. Robert Avsec, retired Chesterfield Virginia Battalion Chief, advocates for gender and race equity in the fire service. In response to reading The Fire She Fights he said, “… Tragic in my opinion, the male firefighters who daily ignore what’s happening in their fire station… empower the continued inappropriate behavior by their male colleagues and contribute to the stress that many female firefighters endure. What I really found to be an “eye opener” was reading about the “reach downs”, a term used by many in the Minneapolis Fire Department to describe the initial hiring of black male firefighters. I was appalled to read about how, rather than empathizing and supporting the women coming on the job, they instead treated those women just as their white male counterparts did. A very disturbing form of “I got mine, the heck with you,” that they apparently felt was necessary to curry favor with those white male peers.

Avsec continues, “As a firefighter paramedic who served for 26 years …I had the opportunity to train and work with a number of resolute and skilled female firefighters. I recognized early in my career that they “brought to the table” many characteristics that could only help our department to better serve our community. Just as importantly, I saw the effect they could have on their male counterparts, through their empathy and understanding for not just the people they served, but their colleagues in the fire station.”

What is the answer? I wrote The Fire She Fights to support women firefighters and to wake us up. I believe some will heed Chief Avsec’s words, “I sincerely hope male firefighters and officers read the book. Because if they do, I believe they’re going to be “shocked” to see that they’re one of two characters in Moore’s book. They’re either the person whose behaviors are inappropriate, or the person who’s looking the other way.”

We need the good guys to be more than in the mix, we need the men to mix it up.

To stretch further society must abandon the bullying of one gender, anywhere. As Rianne Eisler, author of The Chalise and the Blade and President of the Center for Partnership says, “The opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy, it is partnerism.”

My wish for my professor’s unbelieving firefighter neighbor, and all like him, is that the fire service puts as much emphasis and value on teaching compassion as it does training cadets to handle a fire hose. It is through partnership between genders that firefighters can become true public servants, and live up to the characteristics of a hero including compassion, courage, and integrity. It takes work. Imagine the greatness that comes when we value genders equally with a diversity of skills. What will you do in 2022 to bring us closer to partnership?