Over the past decade or so, women firefighters have been a topic of considerable interest. Since the affirmative action legislation of the 1960s and 1970s giving women greater opportunities in firefighting, there have been enough stories of individual women in the field and enough statistical data to get an objective picture of the abilities of women with respect to firefighting and of the effect of women on the field.

In the past few decades, women have made considerable progress in the field. Practically no one any longer questions their right to be firefighters; and fewer persons question their ability to perform the work of firefighting. No

Seligman, Daniel. (18 May 1992) "Great Moments in Firefighting." Fortune, 120.

Judith Livers of the Arlington County Fire Department in Virginia is the first women to be recognized as a career firefighter. (Richardson, 2001) This means that she received a regular salary and benefits just as the male firefighters of Arlington County. Livers retired in 1999 with the rank of battalion chief. Many of the women going into firefighting in the decades of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s from the opportunities created by the affirmative action were African American. Genois Wilson of the Fort Wayne Fire Department in Indiana was one of the first of these. Another African American who set a precedent in opening up a local fire department to women was Toni McIntosh of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire in Pennsylvania. McIntosh was the first female fire fighter to get a position with this firefighting organization.

Although many women firefighters had to give up their positions when the War ended and large numbers of servicemen returned to the United States, women had broken the barrier to entry into firefighting. Women had proved that they could perform firefighting work as effectively as men. Holding positions as firefighters at all levels over a period of time and regularly seen as doing so by citizens when they went out to fight fires or participated in community activities, women were no longer seen as anomalous or marginal individuals in the field. Although most of the women who had been firefighters during World War II had to give up their positions when the War ended, many women managed to keep their positions; this increasing appreciably the number of women in firefighting compared to the years before the War.

Women also met opposition to becoming firefighters on the ground that firefighting, like police and military work, required especially strong bonds between individuals working together under demanding, as well as often physically challenging, conditions. Individuals working together in such hazardous, stressful work would have to have a high level of dependence on one another. Women would disrupt the male bonding which took place among groups of men firefighters so they could work together as a cohesive team, so the opponents of women in firefighting argued. (Yoder, 1997, 328-32) As the opponents argued, men just would not--and could not--bond with women the way they could with other men to form a reliable, highly-skilled, cohesive firefighting unit. Nor could men ever depend on women in hazardous or emergency situations in the way that was necessary to met these effectively.

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Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)