Throwing the Ladder

If you decide to become a firefighter, there are many tests you need to pass. So many in fact, that nearly 70 percent of aspiring firefighters quit before they even get through them. For women, the hurdles are especially daunting. Just four percent of all firefighters in the U.S. are female, even as that number has risen to 14 percent in similarly traditionally male professions like police and the military.

Firefighter Paramedic Siene Freeman in turnout gear

Of all the tests that firefighters are required to pass, the hardest for women may well be the ladder throw, which involves hoisting and balancing a 24-foot extension ladder onto the side of a structure at a 65 to 75-degree angle. Captain Heather Hogelund of LA County Fire Department, who is 5-foot-4, says it was the most difficult part of the Candidate Physical Ability Test. The ladder throw is introduced in the first week of training and recruits have until the 8th week to pass it. Every day at lunch, Hogelund practiced throwing the ladder.

Bruised from her neck down to her elbow, she learned to use a different technique than the men did because of her height. “Most guys walk and take a lunge to get their momentum to give it up an upward motion,” Hogelund said. “But I had to do a complete stop, squat, and throw. It’s the ultimate test of upper body strength.”

Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD) uses the Candidate Physical Ability Test to simulate the requirements of the job, such as climbing stairs, raising ladders, dragging hoses, and carrying equipment. If a recruit does not pass the ladder throw, then they do not pass the exam. In other words, they can’t become a firefighter. According to Hogelund, Captain Sara Rathbun, Firefighter Paramedic Siene Freeman, and Firefighter Specialist Shannon Olson of the LACoFD, throwing the ladder is the most common part of the Candidate Physical Ability Test that women fail.

While there are societal and systemic impediments that still hinder women from realizing their dream of becoming a firefighter, these women, all of whom have made it, say there is progress. In Los Angeles County, they say, they are building a culture that does not focus on gender, but instead focuses on ensuring that every firefighter maintains the character, physical strength and courage to be the best.

“There’s no way to make it easier for anyone or somebody is going to get hurt,” Hogelund said. “You have to have the mentality of being the biggest, baddest thing in town. Even if you are strong you have to be confident and do the job under pressure.”

According to the most recent data, from 2017, from the National Fire Protection Association, there are just over a million firefighters in the United States; about a third are career firefighters and two-thirds are volunteer firefighters. A total of seven percent are women, and of those four percent are career firefighters.

The male to female ratio in the LACoFD is not much different than the national average. Among the 3,400 firefighters in LA County, 46 are female. Despite significant efforts to improve this gender gap in the industry, Hogelund and Freeman are not surprised that it persists.

“For most of us women, by the time we decide we want to be firefighters, we are already in our 20s many times,” Freeman said. “And it’s very rare you find a 14-year-old female that says ‘yeah I want to be a firefighter,’ who is not getting discouraged to be that.” By the time many women who are interested in the profession hit their mid-to-late 20s, they have a difficult time getting into the type of shape necessary for the job, unless they have stayed very physically active, she said.

But the delay in becoming interested in a firefighting career is not the only—or the most powerful—impediment to increasing the number of women who commit to a career as a firefighter. According to Dr. Corinne Bendersky, UCLA professor of management and organizations, and an expert in workplace conflict, one of the most powerful false narratives about inclusion in the fire service is that departments lower standards in order to increase representation of women. Bendersky says this false narrative results in the mindset that the vast majority of women in the industry aren’t qualified.

“There is a general narrative and a fundamental assumption that women can only get in under lower standards,” Bendersky said. “And therefore, people frame at a cognitive subconscious level that women are threats to the integrity and safety of the force, not resources.” When a firefighter is perceived as a threat to the integrity of the department, as a threat to one’s own personal safety, and as a threat to the ability of the force to do its job, people construct stories and theories to validate this fallacy, Bendersky said.

As a result of this false narrative, female firefighters face a constant battle to prove themselves and prove their worthiness. Unfortunately, that task gets harder when the perception of women’s competence is undermined.

Firefighter Paramedic Siene Freeman

They “feel like they are under a microscope and there is tremendous spill-over effect,” Bendersky said. “If one woman screws up, that validates the skepticism about all women and it creates a greater burden that all women have to carry.”

Hogelund and Freeman work at LA County Fire Station 19 in La Cañada, a small station with a co-ed, dorm-style sleeping area, communal bathroom and not much privacy.

“The good part is you’ll never miss a run,” Hogelund said. “It’s old school. I like it because it’s the way it was, and it feels more like family.”

Traditionally, fire stations were built in a large dormitory style, furnished with individual beds, bunk beds, or wall (murphy) beds in a communal sleeping area. But as women join the profession, private sleeping quarters have become more common.

In a statement released by LACoFD, Fire Chief Daryl L. Osby said, “During my tenure as Fire Chief, we have made significant strides towards the enhancement of privacy accommodations for all members, including females, at all Department facilities. Currently, all genders may work at any fire station they choose; however, we are working towards upgrading our older fire stations to provide a more comfortable environment for our members.” Osby further wrote that there are currently 13 “enhancement projects” under construction at fire stations throughout the county to meet those standards.

But some fire stations in LA County are 70 years old, and according to Hogelund, putting up walls would create physical and mental barriers within the firehouse.

“When people say that it’s unacceptable that we have to deal with that, I don’t look at it like that at all,” Hogelund said. “I am lucky I come here. I am not going to complain about stuff like the dorm. If I really hated it, I could go somewhere that has separate dorms.”

Hogelund, one of 12 female fire captains in the LACoFD, has been a part of the department for 18 years. After graduating from high school, she was eager to find a challenging, rewarding, and physical job. But Hogelund did not start the recruitment process until she met a female firefighter for the first time at age 22. “She’s the one that told me, ‘Hey you could try it, you could do it. There are women that are being firefighters.’”

Freeman said she wanted to be a firefighter since she was a young girl. “When I was growing up in Southern Oregon, as a kindergartener I toured a fire station and I thought, ‘this is the coolest thing in the entire world.’ But… it was not exactly looked upon very positively, especially in the small town I grew up.”

The constant negativity eventually overcame Freeman and she put aside her dream. Freeman instead pursued a career in exercise physiology. It wasn’t until a life changing event struck her family that Freeman changed her course. In 2014, Freeman’s younger sister was diagnosed with cancer and passed away soon after.

“I realized how short life was and it kinda woke me up to think about the things I had always wanted to do in life, and the things that I was passionate about,” Freeman said. “And one of those things was being a firefighter.”

Freeman recalled the experience seeing the paramedics on her sister’s last day of life. She was eager to be in those paramedics’ shoes. “It just made me even more passionate about wanting to be a part of something that on someone’s worst day, you might make either the patient or the patient’s family members feel just a little bit better,” she said. “I knew what I had to do. So here I am.”

"We all have our value that we bring, and that's really important." -Firefighter Freeman

The first few years Hogelund and Freeman worked as firefighters were the hardest. They say they had to work twice as hard to prove that they were capable of getting the job done. In fact, both of them were once told that they were not good enough simply because of their gender. But these kinds of comments only pushed them to become physically and mentally stronger firefighters.

“The hard parts that I’ve encountered have made me a better firefighter,” Hogelund said. “Even if they were hard going through it -- having people be rough on you, and yell at you and tell you that maybe you aren’t good enough -- that’s just a game that we play to knock you down and see if you get back up. And that might sound harsh to people but not everybody gets back up.”

Captain Sara Rathbun, who has been a firefighter in LA County for 13 years, said female firefighters must have a thick-skin and not take everything so seriously in a male dominated field. Swear words, dark-humor, and jokes that may offend some women, are part of the firehouse culture. Hogelund, Freeman and Rathbun all said that the male-centric firehouse culture does not irritate them.

Rathbun is a member of the Women’s Fire League, a non-profit that operates several women’s programs intended to prepare candidates for the LACoFD recruit academy. It is taught by the women and men of the LACoFD. The curriculum is designed to simulate a drill tower experience, sample the daily physical demands, and introduce the firefighting skills required to succeed in an academy. Rathbun said programs like this will prepare women at a young age to succeed in the recruitment process.

“To try and close a gap that was created by not hiring women [career female firefighters] until 1970, is going to be hard,” Rathbun said. “To do it fairly and quickly, we have to prepare women in aggressive ways. We want to make sure that we have entrance requirements that are required for the position. And then we want to make sure that we are not discouraging women.”

According to Rathbun, the gender gap in the firefighting industry stems from two major barriers: Awareness and perception. Like Hogelund, she had never seen a female firefighter until after college.

“My dad had a female paramedic partner in the rescue helicopter,” Rathbun said. “He worked for Air Rescue Five, LA County Sheriff’s Mountain Rescue Unit. That was the first time I saw a woman doing something that I really wanted to do.”

Rathbun also said a woman’s own perception of what she is capable of hampers female firefighters overall. She relates it to junior high girls preventing themselves from mastering math, assuming that women are not as good at math as men are.

“There are physiological differences that make me have to throw a ladder differently than a male my same size and strength,” Rathbun said. “But we both get the ladder up. Acknowledging that just because you have to use a different technique and maybe teach a different technique, which is something our department is now coming around to, is a huge piece of that puzzle.”

When comparing the rate of female firefighters nationwide, to the rate of 13 percent of women in the police force, and 14 percent in the military, clearly there are some major systemic barriers preventing women from becoming firefighters, too.

According to Bendersky, the fire service is a generalist profession, whereas the military is specialized, meaning every professional firefighter must go through identical recruit academies, and is accountable for the same set of skills. Bendersky says she has challenged captains, battalion chiefs and those in charge of operational staffing in the fire service because much of the skepticism specifically about women is about their physical size and physical ability for doing things that are much harder if you are shorter than 5-foot-8.

“The big question is whether a small man or a small woman can excel in the position which requires, for example, extending a 35-foot ladder,” Bendersky said. “So I have asked, as long as a woman has met the department standards, why would you put a suboptimal person in that role? We should put them in the roles they excel.” Overall, Bendersky says she challenges the assumption that everybody has to be able to do everything. She believes in optimizing role positions within the industry to aid gender equity.

"You need to be thick-skinned. You need to be tough. You need to know that you are going to do labor for 30 years." -Captain Heather Hogelund

Freeman has a slightly different approach. “As a female in the fire service right now, we have worked really hard and sacrificed a lot of things to get here, and to stay here,” she said. “I am really proud to be a firefighter. I tell my kids this is something you can do if you work hard for it. If you lessen that, it takes away how hard we have worked to get here.”

In January 2018, the LA County Fire Department developed and implemented the Community Outreach, Recruitment, Diversity, and Inclusion (CORDI) Section to enhance recruitment and community outreach opportunities, and grow the workforce to aid diversity. In order to be more effective in increasing diversity and promoting inclusion in the department, the bureau implemented a “two-way approach” to recruitment, which included designing pathways and bridges for different groups of people to enter the department.

CORDI Chief Andrea Avila said the section incorporates a multifaceted approach to recruitment both internally and externally. Externally the section implements community outreach programs, develops pathways, and maintains and builds relationships with local community groups, schools, local government, and other firefighting agencies. Internally, the section works in conjunction with the Organization Development Division to ensure that training is fair.

In terms of external outreach, CORDI has created several recruitment programs, including the Women’s Fire Prep Academy, Women’s Fire League, Girl’s Fire Camp, Explorer program, and ARISE summit. Each of these programs was created to better prepare women for the physical exam everyone is required to pass to become a firefighter.

A firefighting entrance exam only opens up once every two or three years. Avila said the most recent exam in June 2019 had nearly 7,000 applicants, but because candidates are still being processed, diversity data will not be available for another six to eight months.

“We are looking forward to seeing the diversity improve from the exam that we had in June 2019, which will be a result of all of our recruitment efforts over the last couple of years,” Avila said.

At the end of the day, Hogelund encourages women to enter the department, but hopes they are committed to doing labor for 30 years. “This is a hard physical job,” Hogelund said. “It is very rewarding and there is down-time. But overall you need to know that you are going to work for this, for this job. And you will get injuries, that’s part of it. But it has to be something that you really really love.”

Captain Rathbun is currently in Mongolia teaching a prehospital trauma life support class set up through the embassy and the National Association of EMTs. The goal of the course is to help Mongolian doctors set up a more robust EMS system in their country. When I asked Rathbun about her experience there so far, she didn’t even mention the 20-below temperature until I brought it up. Instead, she said she has learned a lot teaching there, and is proud to represent the UCLA Center for Prehospital Care and the Los Angeles County Fire Department, even if she gets frostbite along the way.