Tag Archives: women firefighters

So, if a strong and articulate and bright woman can feel like this over the course of her career (Remember, she rose through the ranks and retired as a captain), how are other women dealing with these issues and anxieties?

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.

In this latest installment of Reader “Mailbag” I’ve collected several of the reader comments in response to the blog post, The Sexual Sexual Harassment Strike OutAssault and Rape of Women Firefighters: Survey Results. I gleaned the representative comments from across the various social media platforms where this blog appears, e.g., LinkedIn Groups, Facebook, and Twitter.

I’m sitting at my computer on a beautiful Sunday morning, Mother’s Day as a matter of fact, and I’m working on this blog post. And I’m getting madder by the minute. Mad because I’m collecting the written comments from the survey on Sexual Assault and Rape Against Women Firefighters and I cannot comprehend the idea that the same men who are treating the moms in their lives to flowers and cards and dinner are the same men who have sexually assaulted or raped their female colleagues in the fire station.

Sexual assaults and rape being perpetrated on our sister firefighters by their colleagues--and in many cases their leaders--isn't a women's issue that they can solve. It's a failure of fire department leadership and that means it's up to the men who occupy the majority of leadership positions in the fire service to eradicate this blight from our profession.