♪ [dramatic 1980s bluesy rock] ♪ [police sirens] - Male Narrator: Fighting fires is a hard, tough, dangerous job.

A man's job.

Women never got a chance to do this job until recently.

Now, Madison, Wisconsin has eight women firefighters.

The first in the department's 142 year history.

They've been on the job for over two years and they've learned that fighting fires is not the toughest part if you're a woman.

- Captain Duane Neitzel: Call it what you wanna.

Call it male chauvinism, whatever you want to call it.

I think there still is that pressure on some of the individuals at a fire scene who figure and firmly believe in their own opinion, which they're entitled to, that the women are not qualified, that they are not as strong as the male.

- Chief William Stamm: Some of the women feel that it isn't the job for a woman.

And, and I have to be frank.

Uh, I feel the same way.

It isn't a job-- I wouldn't want my wife doing it because I know the dangers of it.

I, I've been through it.

- Pamela Jackson: I guess some of those people, you have to wait till they die before... - Woman: You're gonna change their mind.

- Pamela Jackson: Yeah, they're not going to change.

They've seen women do it, they've heard about women doing it.

They will not believe it.

And that's all there is to it.

- Jan Jefferson: The fire department has not seen a lot of change since its inception I think.

And I think that's basically what men object to-- some men object to is that women signify changes.

Women tend to be the symbol of all the change that's going on.

- Narrator: Change is the name of the game.

Change puts pressure on everybody, on the people who want change and on the people who fight against it.

Women firefighters are challenging one of the last exclusive men's clubs in America.

Why?

- Pamela Jacobson: Good hours, good money.

They want to feel that they're doing something worthwhile.

And that's one of the things I thought-- that I feel being a firefighter.

I thought it'd be challenging.

Yeah, there's a lot of things.

- Marcia Holtz: When I started, uh, putting in my application and things, I had the same image.

I think that most of the public does that.

It's really exciting and um, in our great chance to get out there and save lives and do dangerous work and hard work.

- Beverly Buhr: And I like the idea of combining physical and mental skills.

You know, you have to be thinking, but you're also, you know, working physically versus just sitting at a desk, having a job where you were just using your mind.

And I will say this was the kind of job you could use both your mind and your body.

- Male Narrator: In this program, we'll see how the Madison Fire Department met the challenge when women applied for the job of firefighter-- not typing, not filing-- firefighter.

Madison has discovered what millions of American women already know; When given a chance, women are capable of being firefighters.

Affirmative action can provide that first chance, but affirmative action works only when the people in power want it to work.

- Eugene Parks: Any kind of approach that is used that is within the law that has as its foundation, the commitment of the chief of that department, the commitment of the mayor, and the governmental body of that city-- if it has a real commitment-- will, in fact, succeed in hiring minorities and women.

- Lieut.

Charles Merkle: I happen to believe in affirmative action.

I think affirmative action's right.

I remember in 1949 when I applied for this job, I could have been the biggest, most intelligent, strongest Black in this country.

I would not have got the job because I was Black.

That's wrong.

It's just as wrong to give me the job just because I'm Black.

I think their stepped too far with it.

- Male Narrator: Some fire departments also think Madison has stepped too far, particularly in physical strength requirements.

- Chief William Stamm: Yeah, I think the men who made a study of, of the problem of not getting women on the fire departments around the country have come to the conclusion that it's their upper body strength and raising ladders, like roof ladders that they have to put up on a roof, and that, and, and uh, and holding charged hose lines.

They seem to get thrown around a little more?

- Chief Edward Durkin: I think the job of firefighting is total body strength.

I think upper body strength is a myth that somebody, uh, somewhere came up with and it sounds good.

Uh, the job of firefighting, uh, requires total body strength, not just upper body strength.

- Elizabeth Emshoff: Upper body strength is important, but women have, for instance, probably greater strength in their backs and legs.

You don't find women having anywhere near the back injuries that you do in men.

That's a real problem in the fire service.

- Male Narrator: Upper body strength was once tested by having recruits climb ropes, but firefighters don't climb ropes at a fire scene.

They climb the ladder.

So the tests in Madison have been changed.

- Chief Edward Durkin: One of the problems with our department in the past and possibly other departments is in the recruiting process is geared really at only the part of the fire service that's the actual fighting the fire.

Now, in our particular city, that's probably less than 2% of the time.

And I'm sure in probably no city is it more than 5% or 8% of the time, and some cities less than that, and yet, we've geared or have geared in the past that recruiting process strictly on the brute strength type of thing.

- Elizabeth Emshoff: The key is when there have been changes, they oftentimes have been to make the entry test work-related job-related.

Does it in fact reflect the job of a firefighter?

[sirens] [flames crackling] - Male Narrator: When you apply for the Madison Fire Department, they give three tests: written, oral, and physical.

Beth Emshoff studied hundreds of American fire departments before she put together the Madison physical tests.

- Elizabeth Emshoff: I think that the test that is being done here in Madison is as comprehensive as you can get anywhere.

It does some of traditional testing, sit ups and push ups but for good reason you want abdominal strength because I know that it prevents back injuries or you want to just upper body strength push ups are a fairly decent tests but the rest of the uh the exam does things like going up a couple flights of stairs.

There is carrying weights, doing things like pulling yourself up onto a ladder at seven feet off the ground, getting across it, coming back down hand-over-hand traversing a ladder cause you're all drive related is things that typically go on in your day to day.

Picking up 125 pound dummy and carrying it a certain distance.

All these kinds of tests are job related.

And the last test, and I think this is an important one, is a run.

It's an endurance test.

- Captain Duane Neitzel: They've proved that they have the endurance, but do they have that initial spur of the moment strength that's going to be called upon to use for a short period of time, 5, 10 minutes period.

Endurance.

It's proven throughout the country.

Women are endurance wise, over a long period of time, can last a lot longer than the average male, but not in a spurt.

- Lieut.

Charles Merkle: Some people weigh 200, 250 pounds and you've got to carry them out of a, out of a... on a stretcher, get them around the stairways, around the area ways.

Sometimes that isn't very-- You need some upper body strength.

We've reduced the minimum.

There's just so many people that can do that.

- Elizabeth Emshoff: That's the big question.

That's the one that, um, I think you'll find union leadership.

You find people in the community.

I know of a judge who looks at some young girl and says, you couldn't carry me out of a building.

And the answer is probably nobody in this room could carry you out of the room, judge.

You'll find men that have been a job 30, 35 years and they have never carried anybody out.

Now they may have dragged someone out or helped somebody drag somebody out, but once you get your full turnout gear on, bunker pants, boots, coat, helmet, breathing apparatus, you've already got 60 to 70 extra pounds and you've been working hard to get in there.

You're not going to pick anybody up except the small child in your arms.

- Lieut.

Charles Merkle: We have many people, men and women, that apply for the department, and when they get in the training, and they smell that little smoke right off the bat, you know, and they'd say, "That's not for me," and they walk out.

If you have to do that and raising ladders and hoses, well, that's, that's our job.

Smoke, raising ladders, working with hose lines, those are the three most important things that we do in rescue work.

And they say right off the bat, "That's not for me, If that's what you have to do."

- Beverly Buhr: Yeah, there was a lot of pressure in training.

We could feel it all the time.

Whenever we tried something, all eyes would be upon us and if you failed, it was like all the women failed.

- Beverly Buhr: One thing we learned through training and have learned even more so since we've been in the stations is that there's a technique to everything.

When you come through training and stuff they're used to presenting it in a certain way, but-- So, in my team that that strength is an important factor, but it's really more technique than strength, I think.

- Pamela Jacobson: It's especially bad in the kinds of activities that men have traditionally done, such as swinging an ax or using a saw, things that aren't necessarily that difficult.

But if you've never tried them, you don't want somebody watching you right away, Especially if no one's really explained that clearly how to do it and maybe a man would walk up and do it right away and look better.

- Jan Jefferson: There's no room to make mistakes and learn your technique.

I mean, and there's was no technique training.

It wasn't like-- We went around and showed each other how to do things and it was like, Oh yeah, I tried this to get this ladder off here.

You know, you should try that.

And but there wasn't that.

We don't have an old boys club to pass information down to us and the men do, a lot of them.

- Beverly Buhr: And the thing that's always happened in the past is people have helped each other out.

And that's a really important thing in a job like this is cooperation.

And it's not talked about.

It's talked about in the books and things, but then, when you actually get in a situation, people don't just run over and pick up this heavy thing by themselves.

Everybody helps them out and does this and does that.

- Jan Jefferson: When you start talking to firefighters that've been on the force a while, you find out that a few years ago, no one had to hold the two and a half inch hose.

And that was sort of a big thing in our training, was to be able to hold that yourself.

And they never had to even try that.

And then, somebody else says, but we had to swim and we had to run.

We had to do this and only the fittest got in.

And every year just about, the standards have changed.

It just became an issue when they, it looked like women were going to be hired.

- Beverly Buhr: Yeah, I think it goes back to, a little bit, we were talking about or Marcia mentioned, the hero type of image and the fact that women can do a job that supposedly you're supposed to be so strong and brave to do.

I think that that's threatens, you know, some people that have that, that image.

- Pamela Jacobson: There is the feeling that you have to prove yourself to them.

That was one of the biggest shocks to me in entering the station is having gone through 12 weeks of pretty intensive training and then to have, my first officer asked me if I could catch the hydrant.

I mean, what did he think we were doing out there for 12 weeks?

We don't have the greatest problems with men that have been on for 20 or 30 years.

It's the men that are in their mid-thirties that have been on for 10 to 15 years because they're not part of the new group that are the young, bright hopefuls.

They're not the experienced-- - Seen a lot of change, - Seen a lot of change, man, either.

They're threatened.

The macho image is disappearing and they need that.

They want that and... - Woman: That's what the given is, is that women are outcasts on the fire department.

- Anybody that stands with us is an outcast in the boys club and that's like one thing that came out in the Gilbert thing is so many people that we thought were our friends and our supporters just would not stand up and support us.

- Male Narrator: In the Gilbert thing, one friend did stand up and support the women publicly.

Chief Durkin suspended Lieutenant Gilbert for derogatory remarks the officer made while on duty about women firefighters.

- Lieut.

Charles Merkle: He filed charges on him and wanted to take his bars away for a certain four-letter word utilized-- [tone generator bleeps out word] It's used as shop talk all over the country.

Not only in fire departments and servicemen, everybody.

We're not a Unitarian church.

You can't tell the serviceman, either, what they should say.

In the first place, it wasn't even the woman present at the time.

- Captain Duane Neitzel: Some the stress I think is placed on the male.

Let's face it.

Some of the males are as modest as any ah... female may be.

But where, in the stations previously, the male could walk down the hallway from the shower room to the locker room, back to the bedroom or wherever.

If he didn't want to-- If he wanted to go on nude, fine.

Uh, now that everything is... People are on the edge.

You have to be a little bit aware that there is a female within the station.

- Pamela Jacobson: It's not like home anymore because the women are here and that sort of doesn't make sense.

Most of-- Most of them have women in their lives at their home.

So you encounter a lot of... mm, fighting because they aren't being able to do something that they've always done.

For instance, having their magazines around, their porno magazines, or telling sex jokes all day, different things like that.

And those kinds of things do make it hard being there, being among them.

- Jan Jefferson: Also, that is contradictory.

This is not like home anymore.

Uh, what I think a more accurate way of putting it is that it's no longer like their locker room.

Um, high school locker room.

I mean, there's a lot of talk about how, um, firefighters' wives objected to women's sleeping in the same dorm, and that was played up in the media a lot before we came on and that hasn't been a problem at all.

And most stations now, um, there are not separate quarters, and the men and women sleep in the same dorm or share the same bathroom.

And we just work things out like you do in any other area of your life.

I mean, at home you close bathroom door when you 're in there.

That's what you do at the station.

- Marcia Holtz: Sexual tensions aren't the problem.

I'd say gender tension, the underlying feeling that women just shouldn't be in fire stations.

That's not sexual, that's gender.

- Elizabeth Emshoff: When these particular men who tend to be more traditional values look at their job as being this way.

And then they see women who they consider to have certain roles in our culture.

And that's as a homemaker and a provider and a caretaker.

When they see women who they may even think is inferior to them in some ways, they can now do my job, my job, which I think is the most male job in my culture.

That's incredibly threatening.

I understand that.

- Woman: I think that's threatened too because, well, it's these rumors again that, of course, in a few years, we'll be officers and those are the same people that are going to be, we'll be competing against them and that's the room.

I doubt that that's going to be happening.

But um, these people, some of them think that their career opportunities are decreased or diminished by the fact that we're here competing with them now.

- Elizabeth Emshoff: And I think it needs to be addressed, um, by departments that intend to have women become integrated as understand where these men are coming from because they are not bad men.

And I think that that's, but that's also another myth.

And when we do have difficulty in bringing women in, it's because these men are somehow deceitful, bad, awful people.

And they are not at all.

- Marcia Holtz: Some of the men in this department think that women shouldn't be on because of the emotional factor that women are more emotional and they won't be able to handle fire scenes or accidents or whatever.

And actually I think women being in the department has sort of helped relieve their position instead of having to be this real store tough guy.

They can be more emotional because the women are, would be more understanding of that kind of reaction instead of having someone tease them about, um, being shocked at, I've seen a burned body,, feeling queasy over seeing blood at a car accident.

Um, those are natural reactions.

- Pamela Jacobson: Emotions are a big part of the job.

It would be really bad if you didn't show any compassion for people at a scene.

And I mean definitely in tradition men have tried to hide that part of themselves and that's something that they can learn from women.

There are a lot of things that we bring from our socialization that are very important and they shouldn't be overlooked.

- Beverly Buhr: [sighs] I think there are people that are hanging on, that still don't believe we can do it and will still try to give us, uh, give us a hard time, but we are getting support.

- Eugene Parks: There's a need not only for men to change their attitudes about women being in the fire service, but many women must change their attitudes as well.

Uh, there are many women in the community who do not believe women ought to be firefighters.

- Beverly Buhr: That's the thing that can really make people change is if, you know, the male firefighters on your crew think, well, she can do the job and they're telling other people that, that's what's going to make people's attitudes change I think is, you know, coming from the men on the job.

Not so much of us saying, well, we can do it, you know.

- Jan Jefferson: Basically, I think that change is happening.

Sometimes, I get frustrated cause it goes very slowly.

But um, I'm just seeing change now, like with the new recruit class, I think the pressure is really off those people that um, they're not evaluated daily, that people are more accepting.

They say, yes, women can do it because women, we see these women in the station doing it.

So there's less resistance.

And less fear of the unknown than there was when we first came on.

♪ [post-disco electro-funk)] ♪ [fire truck sirens] - Female Announcer: This film was produced with contributions from the Friends of Channel 21, Incorporated and WHA Television, and by grants from the Madison Fire Department, the US Fire Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

♪ [blues funk] ♪