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Anthony Wigglesworth. BSc, MBA, GIFireE. Wigglesworth, A (2001) The
fire-fighter gender issue as seen on TV: How likely is it that the televised
fire fighter will influence viewers to conclude that firefighting is a male
occupation? Fitting-in
(online). Abstract The research reported is concerned with the balance and popular perceptions of gender in the Fire service. The core issue and prime objective behind the research rested with establishing or dismissing the notion that there might be a linkage between the televised image and gender profile of firefighters. The key question on this was concerned with elaborating the likely response of viewers to televised firefighting. In essence, the research was designed to ask whether television viewers are likely to think firefighting is a male occupation. During the research process data was obtained, evaluated, and presented from both secondary and primary sources. Primary data was obtained from a 2-month survey of 70 televised firefighting events that were screened in the Anglia region. Full documented records of this content analysis are presented within the body of the research paper. Underpinning knowledge to the issues deemed central and contemporary to this paper were obtained from secondary sources. To this ends an extensive search of documents and publications was carried out. In conclusion, the author of the paper reasoned that viewers of televised firefighting are unlikely to conclude that firefighting is a male occupation. |
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The fire-fighter gender issue as seen on TV: How likely is it that the televised fire fighter will influence viewers to conclude that firefighting is a male occupation? Anthony
Wigglesworth. BSc, MBA, G.I.Fire.E. Contents Abstract 1.
Introduction. 2.
Evaluation of
Knowledge. 2.1.
Female
Firefighters and the United Kingdom Fire Service. 2.2.
Television Theory
and Gender. 3. The
Research. 3.1.
The Issue
Explored. 3.2.
Research
Approach. 3.3.
Results. 4.
Discussion. 5.
Conclusion. 6.
References. Appendix 1 |
The Fire Service’s of the United Kingdom (UK) are by tradition characterised as an organisation that consists of an uniformed workforce that is white and male dominated. As we enter the 21st century, this tradition is still preserved. This is despite efforts that have made over the last two decades to recruit wider diversity, in both gender and racial terms, into Brigade establishments. In Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector for Fire Services report 1998/99 the number of uniformed officers from black and ethnic minorities stood at 577, for women the figure was 502. At the same time the national Fire Service establishment stood at 48, 321. These figures exclude control room personnel.
In September 1999, the enduring problem of under representation of certain groups was brought to the fore by the publication of Equality and Fairness in the Fire Service : A Thematic Review by Her Majesty’s Fire Service Inspectorate (HMFSI). This contained many criticisms that centre directly on the Fire Brigades consistently poor record in the recruitment of women and other minority groups. The tone of the document placed the blame in this quarter squarely on the internal organisational workings of the Fire Brigades themselves. In the reviews conclusion Fire Brigades were effectively put on notice that their records on the recruitment minority groups, women included must improve. Indeed the final quote of the review, ‘failure is not an option’ (p 82), appears to resound with an element of threatening intent.
Within the service itself the review, or at least its objective intent of fairness and equality, has been well received. However, at the same time it has also given rise to a certain amount of confusion as to the real issues preventing minority groups from joining the Fire Service. In particular, the review seems to omit any consideration to the effect of societal influences that might deter certain groups from becoming firefighters. Most notably, the review seems to have very little to say about the widely assumed and unrecorded fact that very few applications are received minority groups. This is apart from suggesting that Brigades have failed to market the firefighter job across the community.
Clearly, the internalised bias of blame within the review leaves many questions unanswered. This being the case it provides a variety of research opportunities that might be linked to societal influences. Having regard to these unanswered questions the author of this paper has chosen to investigate if the Fire Service’s televised gender profile. Specifically the research reported in this paper seeks to establish if televised firefighters are likely to influence viewers and potential firefighter recruits that, the occupation is solely for males. The significance of this would be to establish the presence of a societal influence as a contributory cause to the current low numbers of female firefighters.
Turning to the more practical arrangements the paper begins by evaluating the current state and understanding of knowledge relevant to issues that the author has deemed essential to this study. The focal issues relate to the historical and present circumstances that confront female firefighters in the UK Fire Service. The treatment of gender and the underlying theories on television are also evaluated. Moving on to section 3 the paper explains the approach and research preferences that were selected during the study. In terms of importance, this section and the instructions laying out the research approach are considered to be of high value and equal to the subsequent discussion. Section 3 will also provide outline the main statistical results produced by the research. Penultimate to the conclusion the discussion centres on establishing the qualitative and wider significance of the results. The discussion within this section is highly instrumental to the final firm conclusions which that are contained in section 5.
This research is supported by a general evaluation of the following subjects,
·
Female
Firefighters and the UK Fire Service.
· Gender and Television.
2.1.
Female firefighters
and the U K Fire Service.
This section focuses on the developments that have resulted in the virtual exclusion of women Firefighters in the U K Fire Service. The documents, articles and information that were considered during this phase of study show the organisation blatantly patriarchal and unwelcoming to women.
In 1957 with the acknowledged help of his colleagues, the Hertfordshire Chief Fire Officer Geoffrey Blackstone wrote his book, A History of the British Fire Service. Despite a compendious original edition of over 450 pages, there are no references to women firefighters.
To mark the Fire Protection Association Golden Jubilee the book was reprinted as a special edition in 1996. In that edition there is a supplementary chapter by R.C. Bentley entitled, Events since 1957. Within it, there is a mention for women firefighters, they are privileged with 27 lines of text. Readers are told that, before the Sex Discrimination Act (1976) organised firefighting by women was largely restricted to events during the second world war. Significantly, we are reminded that prior to the 1976 Act Brigades had operated a male gender selection policy for firefighters. Bentley informs readers that East Sussex Fire Brigade recruited the first peacetime women as a retained firefighter in 1976.
In the Fire Brigades Union’s Forged in Fire (1992), women’s involvement in firefighting is given a much wider coverage in comparison to Blackstone’s earlier omission. A full chapter by Terry Segars is devoted solely to women firefighters and the key developments up to 1990.
Full recognition is given to the many thousand’s of women who were recruited into the National Fire Service during the second world war. Segars also informs his readers of numerous instances where women were employed in firefighting duties during the conflict.
Looking to more modern times and the emergence of women firefighters in the 1980’s Segars finds, that there was, at this time open resentment across the ranks to the recruitment of females. With reference to the London Fire Brigade, he notes that this initial hostility had restricted the number of women firefighters to 34 by 1990. However, beyond the capital some Brigades had still to recruit their first women firefighter by 1990.
By 1993 when Marie Levine wrote her dissertation Out of the Frying Pan, the number of women firefighters in London had risen to 57, while the national figure stood at 87. The objective behind her research was to establish why the numbers of women firefighters had remained low despite the passage of 18 years since the Sex Discrimination Act. The importance of her study is that it unearths qualitative primary data about UK women firefighters, in this it is a first. The information and understanding she brings forward was from interviews with 7 full time women firefighters. At the time, this represented 8.04 % of the UK’s full time women firefighters.
Devines concludes that there are several reasons why women have been reluctant to take up firefighting as an occupation. However, she believes the main reason rests with organisational sexism, as she was told by a senior officer, ‘the Fire Service is a boys club’ (p2). When the compelling evidence from her research is considered there are few that would disagree, it makes harrowing reading. Notwithstanding, the same finding can be arrived at from the fact that there were 87 full time firefighters in an UK establishment that was in excess of 40,000. In explaining the reasoning behind this patriarchal culture, Devine finds an observation by Homer (1992) useful,
‘The British Fire Service has been male dominated
since its inception. It would be surprising therefore that it did not develop a
culture based on male attitudes and the male methods of working
……without balances of the opposite viewpoint these practices may become extreme…. (p8).
Whilst subordinate to her main finding Devine also emphasises that the organisations media image has done little to portray firefighting as an occupation for women. During her research she found that only 1 of the women interviewed had a long-standing desire to become a firefighter. The rest had been prompted to join the service by chance. They were unaware that the world of firefighting was accessible to women. With the benefit of hindsight and later research, Devines conclusion has proved to be spot on. Unfortunately, nobody or at least nobody with influence seems to have been listening. Of course, this research was conducted in 1993 and as Pillinger (1992) infers this was an era of European political ambivalence in respect of gender issues.
The Service’s, ‘boys club image’ is revalidated by Baigent (1996) in, ‘Who Rings the Bell’. His research compliments and asserts the same general conclusion advanced by Devine. In essence, the Fire Service is gripped by a patriarchal culture that denies women equality. Baigent describes the character of this culture as a politicised male hegemonic discourse. Introducing wider generality Baigent finds Cockburns (1991) patriarchal concept of ‘Homosociality’ highly compatible to the male dominated UK Fire Service.
He also makes the case for the existence of Homosociality on the basis of the latest statistical evidence. At the time, Baigent wrote his findings there were 133 full time firefighters employed in 33 of the UK’s 64 fire Brigades. This compares with an equivalent male workforce of over 39,000. In suggesting that this may indicate discrimination against women, he enlists comparable statistical definitions from Skellington (1992), Palmer (1992) and Morris and Knott (1991).
As to how this Homosociality can be broken down Baigent considers political will is important and observes that,
‘The shade of political control at local
authority level has considerable impact
on how Brigades approach equality
issues and is especially important for relations with the trade union’. (p1).
Quite clearly, this implies that the elected local authority must show leadership and commitment to gender equality by enforcement policies. In showing there is a genuine need for enforcement, Baigent criticises the weakness of the Sex Discrimination Act through Snell, who considers,
….‘it does not place an obligation on employers, unions or relevant government and other institutions to take positive steps to break down segregation in jobs and to create genuine opportunities in employment. (Snell, M. 1986 p 26)
The Home Office’s document entitled Equality and Fairness in the Fire Service : A Thematic Review by HMFSI seeks to tackle these issues. In many respects the tone and generality of this review echoes, to the point of plagiarism the earlier studies by Devine ibid and Baigent ibid. The main difference here is that this evaluation has the political sponsorship that Snell bid views as vital to progress meaningful equality. Indeed, on this point we might speculate that there has been a political sea change on workplace gender equality. This has followed the1997 general election result that installed a Labour government which, had within its ranks 101 women members of parliament.
Overall, the review has with statistical and qualitative evidence restated that the causality in the lack of women firefighters rests largely with the organisations outmoded cultural attitudes. During the period that the review was being assembled the UK Fire Service strength consisted of 48,080 firefighters, from that figure, 436 were women. To be blunt the review has officially labeled the service as both racist and sexiest. In essence, this merely confirms what the less influential and silent majority in the service already knew. Therefore, the objective of the review, founded on the ideals of fairness and equality, was initially well received.
However, with hindsight the reviews bias and sole reliance on internalised subjective conclusions, appear open to challenge. The main criticisms that are emerging suggest that the review has neglected to consider persuasive external influences that inhibit women from becoming firefighters. For instance, there is no consideration to the masculine social construction of a firefighter. It might be prudent to suggest that while a cultural makeover is long overdue such change cannot by itself ensure a rapid re adjustment of services gender profile. Whilst data is not available, and the review apportioned criticism on this point, it appears that applications from females, remain consistently low. Quite simply, women are not coming forward in large numbers to join the Fire Service, this is without awareness and experience of the organisations culture. All this suggests that it is plausible that the overwhelming majority of men and women are, and continue to be, influenced by societal factors and view firefighting as a male occupation. This does perhaps lead to an old adage time that asks, ‘has the cart been put before the horse’.
In response to the review, the Home Secretary Jack Straw has set all UK Brigades a target for the recruitment of female and ethnic minorities. With regard to women, brigades are expected to provide a firefighting workforce that is 15 % female by 2009. This is a significant challenge when the 1998/99 annual report of her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Fire Services for England and Wales is consulted. The figures considered relevant to such a consultation are set out in the introduction to this paper. The number of women in this figure was 502 , this equates to 1.03 % of the establishment. Bearing in mind it is 23 years since the first women was recruited into the Fire Service the 15 % target is indeed a stern challenge. If we follow a similar reasoning to Ducci’s 199 prediction of gender parity for senior management positions, at the present rate of progress the target will be reached in 334 years.
2.2.
Television theory
and Gender.
Serious research into the portrayal of gender on television is rooted in the late 1960’s. As such the assembled knowledge is relatively recent and remains open for further extensive development.
It is particularly noticeable and perhaps indicative of the modernity of television that all, or so it seems, texts contain sections devoted to the gender and feminist discourse.
The Television Studies Book (1998), edited by Christine Geraghty and David Lusted is no exception to this rule.
Geraghty and Lusted assert that the historical body of knowledge underpinning television theory is Anglocentric and derived from studies of UK and American productions. More recently, they note the increasing global dominance of American television productions. This is they tell us, the reality of the cultural imperialism thesis presented by Thompson (1991). The result is that American television has to a certain extent established its cultural values as the dominant global culture. In opposition to this hegemony, there are the countervailing forces of the European and other similar public sector broadcasters. In consequence, the dominance of American television has been restrained to the extent that the European and American broadcasting models are distinguished and recognised by television theorists.
In the same book, Jostein Gripsrud attends to the metaphorical and sometimes paradoxical, vocabulary that has grown up with television study. For him there are 3 central metaphors in television at which the medium can be theorised.
·
Television.
The technical aspects of the medium.
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