Current Events > Making the racist Fire Departments more diverse

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://hbr.org/2018/12/making-u-s-fire-departments-more-diverse-and-inclusive

Great article. Some real gems in there. Amazing that this person actually teaches people.

when the topic of female firefighters came up, the importance of physical strength was consistently and spontaneously invoked to justify the relative absence of women in the fire service, but the importance of compassion (a female-stereotyped trait) was rarely, if ever, brought up to argue for bringing more women into the profession.

We're gonna fight that fire with the power of love and understanding!

Get a job as a chaplain if you want to help in emergencies with compassion, not a firefighter.
---

I for one am appalled at the lack of crippled and brain dead firefighters.

Also maybe we should try compassion. Maybe instead of "fighting" fires, we can reason with them and let them enrich our culture.
---

And yet, in my research on reducing gender bias and my work conducting training on general diversity and inclusion with fire departments, I find that, when evaluating fit and competence, firefighters tend to default to a reductive set of traits (physical strength evaluated through strict fitness tests, for example) that serve to maintain white mens dominance in the fire service.

Can someone explain why "white" is specified here? There was literally no reason to specify white men apart from men in this part. Not to ignore the other ridiculous ideas brought up here that fitness tests are a bad thing for firefighters.

CrimsonRage posted...

ThePrinceFish posted...

when the topic of female firefighters came up, the importance of physical strength was consistently and spontaneously invoked to justify the relative absence of women in the fire service, but the importance of compassion (a female-stereotyped trait) was rarely, if ever, brought up to argue for bringing more women into the profession.

We're gonna fight that fire with the power of love and understanding!

Get a job as a chaplain if you want to help in emergencies with compassion, not a firefighter.

what about consoling victims?

also, the article says most firefighters aren't called to fight fires, but medical emergencies.

What about consoling victims? It is entirely secondary to the task of intervening and stabilizing the patient. Which has everything to do with physical ability and skill. It is absolutely exhausting to perform CPR on someone for several cycles.

And yes, ALS calls for fire crews are far more frequent than actual fires.
---

CrimsonRage posted...

ThePrinceFish posted...

when the topic of female firefighters came up, the importance of physical strength was consistently and spontaneously invoked to justify the relative absence of women in the fire service, but the importance of compassion (a female-stereotyped trait) was rarely, if ever, brought up to argue for bringing more women into the profession.

We're gonna fight that fire with the power of love and understanding!

Get a job as a chaplain if you want to help in emergencies with compassion, not a firefighter.

what about consoling victims?

also, the article says most firefighters aren't called to fight fires, but medical emergencies.

Most people by a huge amount in the military never shoot a gun or deal with a violent extremist. You don't need to be in decent shape at all most the time, but you do that because those are the most sensitive and important situations. Just cause that isn't the most common thing fire fighters do, that doesn't mean it isn't the most important and to say firefighters don't need to be prepared or capable for the most extreme situations is absured.