People argue that women aren't strong enough to be firefighters. Here's why they're wrong.

On April 18, five women graduated from New York City’s Fire Academy.

This brings the number of women serving in the Fire Department of New York to 72, the highest in its history.


Despite these milestones, women still make up less than 1% of New York’s 11,000 firefighters.

The city trails Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle, and Miami, where in recent years, fire squads have been more than 10% female. The national average hovers around 5%.



Though women have only served in the FDNY since 1982, they have been putting out fires in the U.S. for 200 years.


One evening, the fire alarm rang but the men were incapacitated by the flu. So Williams grabbed the hand-pumped hose and answered the call alone. Her strength so impressed the men that they offered her a job.

In 1926, 50-year-old Emma Vernell became New Jersey’s first female firefighter when her husband died in the line of duty. Many more women took their husbands’ places in America’s volunteer fire service during World War II. By the mid-1940s, two Illinois military fire departments were “manned” entirely by women.




The answer is yes. In 2008, almost 70% of all aspiring female firefighters passed the national Candidate Physical Abilities Test, which tests for endurance, strength and cardiovascular health. The same year, 75% of male applicants passed.


Critics have suggested to me that there aren’t more female firefighters because women are not interested in such a dangerous and “dirty” job. Yet women are much better represented in fields that require a comparable level of strength and stamina, including drywall installation, logging, and welding (though they remain a minority).

So why are just 5% of firefighters female?



The military first added women to its ranks in 1948. But today, women still account for just 15% of active military personnel.

Firefighting too is a traditional field. Over the past decade, numerous departments have been found guilty of discriminating against applicants of color and ordered to retool entrance testing that had a disparate impact based on race. Women are in some ways even more disruptive newcomers to firefighting because they entirely upend societal gender norms.

Women are also discouraged from pursuing firefighting because those who do face severe harassment on the job.

One woman I interviewed found her oxygen tank drained. Another confided that her male colleagues are so hostile she fears they’ll leave her alone in a fire.


Station houses often lack of private spaces for women, including bathrooms, changing areas and dormitories. In 2016, 34 years after women joined New York City’s fire department, the city boasted that all of its 214 active firehouses finally had gender-separated facilities.


Despite what they're up against, female firefighters still succeed.

Several hundred have risen to the level of lieutenant or captain. Another 150 hold the highest rank of fire chief. That includes Chief JoAnne Hayes-White, whose historic 2004 hiring made San Francisco the world’s largest urban fire department led by a woman.

Meanwhile, these women are transforming how Americans imagine heroism.




This story originally appeared on The Conversation and is reprinted here with permission.


via Seresto

A disturbing joint report by USA Today and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found that tens of thousands of pets have been harmed by Seresto flea and tick collars. Seresto was developed by Bayer and is now sold by Elanco.

Since Seresto flea collars were introduced in 2012, the EPA has received incident reports of at least 1,698 pet deaths linked to the product. Through June 2020, the EPA has received over 75,000 incident reports relating to the collars with over 1,000 involving human harm.

The EPA has known the collars are harming humans and their pets but failed to tell the public about the dangers.

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All photos courtesy of Marie-Claire and David Archbold









Photo courtesy of Kara Coley.




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Over my own 20+ years of motherhood, I've written a lot about breastfeeding. My mom was a lactation consultant, I breastfed all three of my children through toddlerhood, and I've engaged in many lengthy debates about breastfeeding in public.

But in all that time, I've never seen a video that encapsulates the reality of the early days of breastfeeding like the Frida Mom ad that aired on NBC during the Golden Globes. And I've never seen a more perfect depiction of the full, raw reality of it than the uncensored version that bares too much full breast to be aired on network television.

The 30-second for-TV version is great and can be seen in this clip from ET Canada. The commentary that accompanies it is refreshing as well. We do need to normalize breastfeeding. We do need to see breasts in a context other than a sexualized one that caters to the male gaze. We do need to let new moms know they are not the only ones feeling the way they feel.

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