Beyond ‘Token’ Firefighters: Exploring Women’s Experiences of Gender and Identity at Work

Beyond ‘Token’ Firefighters: Exploring Women’s Experiences of Gender and Identity at Work

by Tamika Perrott, University of South Australia

Despite the increasing percentage of women entering masculinized workplaces, certain organizations consistently see 20151012_AA Woman Firefighterlittle change in the gender makeup of their staff. Contemporary scholarship suggests that women in rigidly gendered organizations are often assigned a token status and are victimized due to their gender.

This study relocates the conversations of women as tokens towards a fresh conversation of women’s agency in masculinized workplaces. This paper uses ten qualitative interviews and ethnographic fieldwork to discuss how female firefighters navigate their gender at work. This article draws on reflexive accounts of everyday gendered negotiations to look at how the female firefighters ‘do gender’ within a specific fire service in Australia.

See the full paper here