Right: The U.S. Forest Service's "smokejumpers" parachute out of aircraft into fire areas. These airborne firefighters need to be fit and strong, able to hack out firebreaks and clear flammable debris, as well as to carry huge packs containing firefighting and survival gear, as well as food and water. In 1981, Deanne Shulman became America's first female smokejumper.
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Background information
(The information below is an abbreviated version of the Wikipedia entry 'Women in firefighting'. The full text of this entry can be accessed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_firefighting)
Women in firefighting
Firefighting was formerly an all-male profession. While it is dominated by men in both professional and volunteer contexts today, there are women who fight fire alongside their male counterparts.
History and current situation in different countries
Austria
A female fire brigade was formed in 1912 with an initial recruitment of 60 women. In more recent times, women were admitted to volunteer fire brigades in 1978 and as professionals in 1993.
Germany
Volunteer female firefighters worked in Berlin and Breslau, during World War I, but ceased at the end of the war. Women were again recruited during World War II, especially as drivers, continuing until 1955, when they had all been replaced by men. In the GDR, women were extensively used in support roles, but not as front-line firefighters. Women really began to take on all roles in the 1980s. Female professional firefighters now number about 550 (1.3%), and there are 80,000 volunteers (7%).
Norway
Norway got the first documented female firefighters during the 1980s. In 2011, 3.7% of the Norwegian firefighters were women.
Hong Kong
The Hong Kong Fire service started recruiting women for control and ambulance staff in the 1980s, but the first firewoman was hired in 1994. As of 2003, there were 111 uniformed females, but only 8 were operational firefighters.
Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Shazia Perveen (Born 1990), who hails from Vehari District in Punjab, joined the Rescue 1122 emergency services as a firefighter in 2010. Fighting fire with conflagrations in a field feared even by most men. Shazia's determination is acknowledged by her male counterparts.
India
In 2003, the Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services appointed 1975 Born Priya Ravichandran as a Divisional fire officer, making her one of the first female fire officers in the country. First one to win Anna Medal for Bravery in Tamil Nadu. In 2013, the department inducted its second batch of women firefighters.
In 2009, a proposal was mooted in the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation to allow women into the fire services.
In 2012, the Mumbai Fire Brigade inducted five women firefighters, making them the first in the history of the organisation.
Japan
As of 2003 the Tokyo Fire Department had 666 female firefighters, 3.8% of the total. In 2009, as part of a recruitment drive it was stated that there were 17,000 female fire service staff, though it is not clear how many of these were operational, rather than providing support roles.
Netherlands
Women firefighters go back at least till 1939 and accounted for 3.3% of professional firefighters in the Netherlands in 2000.
United Kingdom
In Great Britain, Girton Ladies' College had an all-women's fire brigade from 1878 until 1932. In 1887 it was reported that women employed in a cigar factory in Liverpool had been formed into a fire brigade, and had effectively extinguished a fire at the factory. During the First World War, women's brigades carried out fire-fighting and rescues in the South of England. During the 1920s, women firefighting teams were employed by private fire brigades. At the beginning of the Second World War, 5000 women were recruited for the Auxiliary Fire Service, rising to 7000 in what was then the National Fire Service. Though trained in firefighting, they were not there for that purpose but for driving, firewatching etc. Many received awards for heroism.
The first women to form an official part of a local authority Fire Service were associated with Gordonstoun School near Elgin in Scotland, where staff and pupils had supported a volunteer unit of the local Grampian Fire Brigade since the school's return from Wales in 1948. Gordonstoun became co-educational in 1972 and trained women as firefighters from 1975, but these initially operated only within the school, not being permitted by the Brigade to join the official unit. The turning point took place in 1976, when the scale of a forest fire on Ben Aigan near Craigellachie on Speyside led the Brigade to seek volunteers from the local community to help fight the fire. Alongside personnel from local Royal Air Force bases, a group of trained women firefighters from Gordonstoun attended, and the performance and endurance of this group over seven days and nights of firefighting led the Grampian Fire Authority to agree to allow women to take on official front-line firefighting roles in the Brigade for the first time. The first woman to attend a fire as an official member of a local authority Fire Brigade was Gordonstoun pupil Bridget Koch, who attended a house fire on Coulardbank Road in Lossiemouth with a Grampian crew from Gordonstoun on 19 October 1978.
The first woman actually appointed as a public firefighter in peacetime was in 1982 to the London Fire Brigade (LFB). As of 2012 there are 257 female firefighters in the LFB. As of March 2007 the proportion of operational firefighters in the United Kingdom who were women was 3.1%.
The highest ranking female firefighter is Dany Cotton, Assistant Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade.
United States
The first known female firefighter of the United States was a slave from New York named Molly Williams, who was said to be "as good a fire laddie as many of the boys," and fought fires during the early 1800s. In the 1820s, Marina Betts was a volunteer firefighter in Pittsburgh. Lillie Hitchcock was made an honorary member of the Knickerbocker Engine Company, No. 5., in San Francisco in 1863, and fought fires for some years after.
In the 1910s, there were women's volunteer fire companies in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Los Angeles, California. In 1936 Emma Vernell became the first official female firefighter in New Jersey.
During World War II some women served as firefighters in the United States to replace firemen who joined the military; indeed, during part of the war two fire departments in Illinois were all-female. In 1942 the first all-female forest firefighting crew in California was created.
There were all-female fire companies in Kings County, California, and Woodbine, Texas, in the 1960s. In 1971 an all-female BLM (Bureau of Land Management) firefighting crew fought fires in the wilds of Alaska during the summer of 1971, and an all-female U.S. Forest Service firefighting crew fought fires in 1971 and 1972 in Montana.
The first known female fire chief in the U.S. was Ruth E. Capello. Ruth Capello was born in 1922 and became fire chief of the Butte Falls fire department in Butte Falls, Oregon in 1973. She died at the age of 70 in 1992. Sandra Forcier, the first known paid female firefighter (excluding forest firefighting) in the U.S., began working in North Carolina in 1973; she was a Public Safety Officer, a combination of police officer and firefighter. The first woman to work solely as a paid firefighter (excluding forest firefighting) was Judith Livers, hired by the Arlington County, Virginia, fire department in 1974. The first female head of a career fire department, Chief Rosemary Bliss in Tiburon, California, became fire chief in 1993. In the United States in 2002, approximately 2% of all firefighters were female.
Terminology
Because of firefighting's historically predominantly male participants, firefighters as a whole were generally called firemen. Now, as more women join the ranks, 'firefighter' has become a widely used term that reflects the role and the various forms of gender participation. However the term 'fireman' remains popular amongst the general public.