Tag Archives: women in fire service

Chief Avsec highlights the importance for scholarship and research in the fire service with this post that features a new research paper from Firefighter Lydia Wilcox on the topic of women entering the fire service in Ontario, Canada.

I have a few issues with my turnout gear and it has taken me approximately 3 years to get someone to listen and realize that I am not just trying to draw attention to the fact that I am a female and I want to stand out. It appears that this is the perception, but I just want to blend in with all of them and I feel that I am not part of the system that we have because I am different.

So perhaps you need to focus those recruiting efforts at youth sporting events for girls, and young girls at that. Because by the time they reach college-age they’ve already got that “mental picture” of what kinds of careers are for women—and that picture probably doesn’t include them wearing turnout gear.

Women in the fire service are not the problem and they are not the solution. Only the men of the fire service can make the necessary cultural changes so that everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality or creed, is accepted for who they are and judged solely on their ability to do the required job.

Photographs and other imagery that predominantly portray female firefighters as sexual objects first, and firefighters second, communicates a very powerful “marketing message” whether men and women in the fire service choose to accept it or not. (Don’t think so? Just ask any marketing professional “worth their salt” what they think).