Interview with Ashley Thompson, The Developing Change in Women of Public Safety, History 150 Spring 2024, Conducted by Amber Mackiewicz, March 19, 2024.
Overview to Social Change Interview
Throughout the development of public safety, the first responder demographics fell heavily onto the male population. The limited first responder workplace that did consist of females was only on a volunteer side of it until the mid-1970s when the first female was accepted onto a paid salary as a firefighter. Throughout history, women have fought for equality when it came to parts of life in comparison to men. Women fought for the right to vote, the right to own property, and the right to the same pay that male workers are receiving. Women who wanted to go into first responder work were further criticized by their peers, family members, and other coworkers that these females were not fit for this type of job. The females who made it through and are a part of this work industry are paid less and discriminated against, but they are trying to make an impact within a non-traditional female job.
Fast forward to today’s society, the first responder workplace is still a male-dominated profession, however, more females each year are applying to either the paramedic or firefighter side of public safety. Ashley Thompson is currently a female paramedic who originally began as a female firefighter in the late 1900s to mid-2000s. Throughout the interview, Ashley speaks about her experiences as she entered the field as one of the only females within her department and how the first responder profession has accomplished tremendous social change over the past 25 to 30 years to be more accepting of a female first responder since she has been a member of the community. Diving into the impact the discrimination and inequality made it difficult, but allowed Ashley to grow in numerous ways.
Biography
Ashley Thompson, who first worked as a female fighter and now currently as a paramedic and assistant high school nurse, began her this career path through a college education. She majored in biology at Old Dominion University and received a minor in chemistry. Growing up and she had taken care of her mother who had lupus which made her interested in a career of helping people. In 1993, she began her volunteer work as an EMT and then tried for a paid paramedic in 1997 after she did not get into medical school. Ashley furthered her education at Tidewater Community College to get her EMS certification. She became a firefighter in 1999 after going through the volunteer fire academy . Due to her minor in chemistry, she was placed on the hazardous materials team for the department. Ashley married another firefighter in 2002 and began starting a family in 2004. She was a firefighter up until 2012. At that time, she went back to the education field as a special education assistant but continued being a part-time paramedic on the weekends. Over the past couple of years she has transitioned from special education to a nursing assistant within the school system. This interview covers the themes of the development and experiences that Ashley Thompson had gone through while being a female within a male dominated first responder work place.
Research: The Developing Change and Female Acceptance
Starting in 1815 and up until the 1970s, there were very few women who were paid first responders. Most women who worked in the field did so as volunteer paramedics or firefighters. In the mid 1970s, the first female firefighter was paid a salary. Many females today are still volunteers. There are 6,500 females who are salaried employees. Based on the 10-year census, twomen in firefighting has increased from 28% to 35%. On the paramedic side, the split between male and females is closer together compared to the firefighter ratio split. It has been described that it is believed females lack the physical ability or the desire to have a paramedic-firefighter career. 83% of the United States Nurses and 35% of Physicians are females and only 21% of them are paramedics with 17% doing work similar to firefighting.
When women were beginning to be more involved, there were a handful of difficulties that caused challenges amongst females compared to male workers. Women tend to be physically smaller than men. There was one device that made it difficult for women to carry; this was a self contained breathing apparatus [scba], a device that is carried on a firefighters back to help them breathe when encountering smoke filled areas. The original weight of this device ranged between 20 to 30 pounds where it now has decreased to around 8 to 10 pounds. Other difficulties that female first responders faced was the psychological impact joining the first responder field placed onto them. As the first responder workplace is known as a male dominant field, many females attempting to go into it experienced self doubt or doubt from other individuals.
Firefighting in specific is a job that is primarily focused to be volunteer rather than paid for women. This nontraditional job for women has developed and changed within today’s society as a more accepting form of occupation.
Bibliography: All Sources Peer Reviewed
- Ainsworth, Susan, et al. “Women Constructing Masculinity in Voluntary Firefighting.” Search.Lib.Jmu.Edu, 2014, search.lib.jmu.edu/permalink/01JMU_INST/lvvpvt/cdi_crossref_primary_10_1111_gwao_12010
- Byron, Juan. “Career Paramedic-Firefighter Staffing Problems: Is Recruiting Women Part of the Solution?” Search.Lib.Jmu.Edu, 2018, search.lib.jmu.edu/permalink/01JMU_INST/lvvpvt/cdi_proquest_journals_2203205000.
- Shuster, Melissa. “ The Physical and Psychological Stresses of Women in Firefighting.” Search.Lib.Jmu.Edu, 2000, search.lib.jmu.edu/permalink/01JMU_INST/lvvpvt/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_29918041.
About The Sources
This interview consisted of research that focused primarily on the social change that females experienced within a heavily male dominated work-field. It focused around a singular female who went into the firefighting side of first responders and has transitioned to the paramedic aspect. The following websites listed below were used to gain statistics, research, and studies that expressed the growth of females within a non-traditional female job.
The first source, “Women Constructing Masculinity in Voluntary Firefighting,” was a peer reviewed article which focused on the role that women play in what was stated as a non-traditional occupation for women and the impact that masculinity plays when females join this workplace. This article written by Susan Ainsworth, Alex Batty, and Rosaria Burchielli dives into a different perspective of females joining the firefighting job and correlates to the development of women in the workforce. This information helps to inform readers about the impact that women have going into the first responder workplace along with the impact that the first responder workplace has on women. search.lib.jmu.edu/permalink/01JMU_INST/lvvpvt/cdi_crossref_primary_10_1111_gwao_12010 [Peer Reviewed]
The next peer reviewed source, “Career Paramedic-Firefighter Staffing Problems: Is Recruiting Women Part of the Solution?” is written by Juan Byron and revolves around the statement of determining the statistical side of females in the first responder workplace. It focuses about the statistics of females in what is deemed to be traditional female jobs and the number of them that are within a non-traditional female job. When searching for the reasoning for the paramedic-firefighter shortage, this article studies the impact that women would have on the field along with what might be pushing them away from these occupations. The recency of this article publication and the information that it is producing provides reader with an inside take and a further explanation to reasoning as to the short representation of female first responders. search.lib.jmu.edu/permalink/01JMU_INST/lvvpvt/cdi_proquest_journals_2203205000. [Peer Reviewed]
The last additional peer reviewed source used, “The Physical and Psychological Stresses of Women in Firefighting” puts into the perspective of the mental and overall physical side of first response that plays the role of potentially deferring women away or shortening their experience within the occupation. Melissa Shuster provided information to allow readers to receive a viewpoint where women experience doubt from others, harassment, alongside with lower physical capabilities that men were taught in the field. This article posted in the 2000s, provides an understanding to the impacts that females joining this career were facing as they were becoming a greater representation in the male dominated field. search.lib.jmu.edu/permalink/01JMU_INST/lvvpvt/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_29918041. [Peer Reviewed]
Transcript
0.03- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: Hi, my name is Amber Mackiewicz and I will be conducting an interview about the social change involving gender and the first responder workplace. To start off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? And how long have you been a part of your profession?
0.16- ASHLEY THOMPSON: So currently, I am a paramedic, and I practice as a medic on the weekends as a part time job. I also work as a clinic assistant in a high school. And how long have I been doing this profession- I had been doing it since 1993 as soon as I graduated high school. I graduated high school and I joined the Volunteer Rescue Squad as an EMT [Emergency Medical Technician] and got my schooling and continued to be a paramedic.
0.44- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: Awesome. Can you describe the things that made you decide that you’re going to fulfill a career within the first responder workplace?
0.50- ASHLEY THOMPSON: So growing up, my mom was very sick. And when she was sick, I knew I wanted to go in the medical field and try to hopefully find a cure for what she had had, she had had lupus [disease where own immune system attacks itself], and I was taking care of her a lot as I was growing up, and I wanted to do something to make a difference. And to start out, I needed to become an EMT [Emergency Medical Technician], to, you know, further my education and learn more about it and see if that was something I wanted to do.
1.21- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: As you were going into this workplace, how did you feel going into it? Or how did other people around you feel when you made this decision?
1.29- ASHLEY THOMPSON: So when I first started out as an EMT [Emergency Medical Technician], I felt very excited about doing something fun and rewarding. My first shift, though, I didn’t know if it was going to be for me. It was, I had three very bad calls and I didn’t know if that was for me, because I had just, you know, I was 18 years old, I was just out of high school. But my crew told me, “Hey, not all shifts are like this, and to tough it out and keep trying.” And so I did. And then I continued on with EMT [Emergency Medical Technician] and got my paramedic.
2.07- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: With involving your family or other outside peers, were there doubts, or really skepticism from them deciding that you were going into this?
2.15- ASHLEY THOMPSON: So becoming an EMT [Emergency Medical Technician] and a paramedic, there wasn’t many doubts that I could do it. I was very determined when I was in school that I could do it. And I was a volunteer. So people were very appreciative of a volunteer, when I made the transition into being a firefighter. That was when a lot of the changes started happening.
2.36- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: How do these challenges or obstacles that you face, like being a woman in this workplace, create difficulty as you moved on through the career or decide to keep being in it?
2.49- ASHLEY THOMPSON: Alright, so when I first started out, I was a volunteer, so I wasn’t getting paid as when I was an EMT [Emergency Medical Technician]. And then I became a paramedic, still as a volunteer. But I didn’t get into med school. And it was like, what am I gonna do with my life, and someone said, “Hey, be a firefighter.” So I chose then to join a Volunteer Fire Academy, through the local city. And that was, that was tough. I had a male instructor who was very dominant in his profession. He did not believe females deserved or needed to be in a fire department. And I pushed and pushed with tears and everything that I knew that hey, let me try to prove him wrong. He did tell me one of the second weeks “Haha, you can’t do this. I told you females can’t do this.” And I just dug deep and knew I needed to do it. He said I could just go back and be a little lonely volunteer. And I knew I did not want to be a volunteer. I wanted to be paid, and try to even make better, a more of a bigger difference in someone’s life.
3.55- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: Were there ever instances that you felt like being a woman in this career put you at a disadvantage or possibly gave you more disadvantages?
4.03- ASHLEY THOMPSON: So my fire academy, there was 13 of us and I was the only female. I had nobody to talk to regarding any difficulties or disadvantages as it was because I was going through it. I just had the men that I had to talk to. But I had a lot of disadvantages and obstacles. One being a female, I’m not as strong in the upper body. Being a firefighter, it is an upper body job. I had to, you know, lift weights, I had to exercise, I had to be able to know how to carry you know the backpack, SCBA [Self contained breathing apparatus], I had to wear all this gear, I had to be able to hold the hose line, you know under pressure with water. There was, it was a lot. Females, yeah, we have to push a lot harder when we want to be a firefighter. And you know, I just knew hey, I’m just gonna dig deep and try to do this. And, you know, there are always obstacles, no matter, you know, any day that I would run, I would have, you know, a good day or a bad day, some days were harder just because I was sore, I just couldn’t do certain things. But that was part of teamwork with your crew, if your crew worked with you, then they knew what your weaknesses were in strength, and then you could kind of balance it out with each other.
5.25- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: How do you feel that this shaped you to be who you are now?
5.27- ASHLEY THOMPSON: I think it shaped me greatly in a positive way. Knowing that no matter who you are, female or male, you can put your mind and body to do anything that you so desire. I knew it was going to be hard being a female. And I knew hey, I need to do this. And so I just kept pushing and pushing. And all of my crews work with me, if there’s something I didn’t know, or didn’t know how to do or I struggled with, then they gave me different techniques on how to do a little bit better. Females, we have the legs. So we have our legs are a lot stronger compared to men. So I was able to dig deep, a little bit more with leg power than they were, they had the upper body, and so sometimes when you add a stronger male in the upper body, then we were able to do things a little bit differently and get the job done.
6.25- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: In comparison to your male coworkers, how were you treated differently from them, or if similarly, like from the higher authorities, were there any female authorities while you were pursuing this career?
6.40- ASHLEY THOMPSON: When I was a volunteer, there were no female authorities, it was only men that I was around. When I became a paid firefighter, in my academy, I had two other females, they were very weak as females in the department, they struggled a lot. And the three of us just work together to get you know, get through the academy. When I got to the fire station, I was the only female. Actually, when I got hired, there was probably only six other females in the fire department at that time. Nobody was of any rank or officer above me, they were all equal to me. And then soon after I was employed for a few years, other females started moving up the ranks to become, you know, lieutenants, captains and battalion chiefs.
7.31- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: Knowing that your spouse is also in this work field, were there any differences between your guys’ experience? And if so, what were they and how did they differ?
7.41- ASHLEY THOMPSON: We didn’t have too many differences with what was going on. Everybody supported both of us. Because when we first met, we were not married. So he would be in one station, I would be in another. And, you know, we will be able to talk about any issues that we had, it was pretty cool to be able to talk about calls or situations that each other had and be able to help each other out. Because being a firefighter/medic, there are a lot of good days and bad days, sometimes more bad days than good. And you have to be able to have someone to talk to that kind of can relate to you. And nobody treated you know any of us any differently because you know, we were dating or married or anything like that, they supported us. And if we ran a call together, it was actually pretty cool. But we pretended like we weren’t dating or married. When we were on the same call. We just went out there and did the job. We would, you know, if it was a cardiac arrest, and we would work the cardiac arrest and be done with the call afterwards or if we worked a car accident, we would be on the same call. And you know what it was, it was just another coworker I didn’t attribute that he was you know, either my boyfriend, fiancé, or spouse at the time, we just got the job done.
9:03- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: How have things changed for the workplace for you after getting married and starting a family?
9.09- ASHLEY THOMPSON: So being a, when I was a firefighter and paramedic, you know, together in the same department, and having a family it’s, it is tough. It’s tough being a female, because you, you have a job to do two things, you have one to take care of your kids, you have to take care of your spouse, and then you have to take care of you know when you go to work. So you have two families and it is very hard to juggle both things and to be able to have that balance. And it’s you know, when you go to work as a firefighter, you have, you know, sleepless nights and then you gotta come home you gotta take care of your kids. And they don’t, your kids don’t care if you’ve been up all night, they want you to play with them, they want you to feed them, they want you to do all those kinds of things. And then you might be exhausted, or, you know, or you can come home and they’re chill, and you can go take a rest, but you have a job to do. And it’s very hard trying to do both roles, and try to be successful in both of them.
10:16- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: Do you feel your other workers perceived you definitely after starting a family and still continuing in a first responder workplace?
10.25- ASHLEY THOMPSON: No, actually, they’re very supportive. Public service is a whole family. And, you know, when you can raise your kids with other firefighters, they remember them growing up, they remember them when they were babies, or they remember holding them when they were in the hospital. And then to see them grow up. And everybody remembers that. And then, then when they have kids, and so forth, and then all the families and firefighters, they get together, they have good, you know, they have cookouts, they have parties, they have get togethers, they do outings, there’s a lot of stuff when you do have a family, in the fire department, and it just becomes a bigger family and a bigger extended family.
11:07- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: Considering that you have been in this field for around 20 years now, how has the first responder workplace changed since when you first were introduced into it until now?
11:16- ASHLEY THOMPSON: So it has changed greatly. One, when you start out as an EMT [Emergency Medical Technician], or medic, it’s about 50/50 when you look at males and females. When you become a firefighter, when I first joined, you know, in the 90s, it, it was not a female dominated workforce at all, it was males all the way. I mean, it was probably 90 to 95% males compared to females. Now, it’s becoming probably about 60/40. Now, and so now there are more females, they haven’t made the job any different, it’s still the same fire, the same car accident, the same cardiac arrest, those things are still the same. But what they’ve done is when females want to do the job they have now they develop now training programs for firefighters that want to be firefighters to get them ready for it if that’s something that they want to do. And with that, more females are doing it, more minorities are doing it. Just because it has been it has been a male dominated job, but it’s just become easier. Our SCBA [Self Contained Breathing Apparatus] packs with how we breathe on air, they’re so much lighter than what they used to be. They used to be, you know, you know, 20, 30 pounds now, you know, they’re 8 to 10 pounds. So things have become a little bit easier. So when females want to do the job as a firefighter it’s easier for them. The job as a paramedic, that has, like I said, that has not changed, that’s still about 50/50 with getting that certification and practicing it. And what’s out there, being able to go out there and treat a patient that has not changed. There’s more technology and stuff we have to do and learn. But no difference there. Except, you know, how we just take care of people.
13:12- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: How do you feel that it will develop into the future as women are becoming more involved within this workplace?
13:20- ASHLEY THOMPSON: Well, now you’re seeing, you know, a whole female engine company, or you’re seeing four females on engine company have one of them, that’s an officer, you’re seeing females now that are becoming battalion chiefs, division chiefs, even fire chiefs. And that is huge. And it’s to the point now where I can’t wait to see what the future holds with how many more females are going to be in the fire service. Because there’s always going to be a fire, there’s always going to be a car accident, there’s always going to be these things out there. And as long as they you know, the men are becoming more appreciative of the females knowing that we can do the job, then it’s just going to it’s just only going to keep getting better. And you know, they’re going to start you know, you know, everybody’s going to be more treated as an equal.
14:09- AMBER MACKIEWICZ: Awesome. Thank you for sharing your experience and the social change that has developed through the first responder workplace.
14:16- ASHLEY THOMPSON: Thank you for having me and interviewing me.
Featured Image Citation
Sostmann, Dominik, Two Firefighters Fighting a Heavy Car Fire with Water, 2021, Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/man-in-black-helmet-and-helmet-sitting-on-motorcycle-R5nubxfCRjA
Follow Up
The interviewee, Ashley Thompson, approved the transcript from the audio on April 6, 2024 and no changes were necessary to be made.
Interview Technology
This interview was conducted over Zoom due to Ashley Thompson living in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and I residing currently in Harrisonburg, VA. After the Zoom audio was converted from mp4 to mp3, Otter.ai was used to conclude the transcript and it was further edited by myself manually making adjustments as needed.
Transcription Process
Based off of the Columbia Style Guide from Columbia University Center for Oral History Research Transcription, The interview process and transcription formatting was in follow of the guidelines stated. The transcript was edited for proper names, clarifications, and annotations that made the transcript more eligible for viewers [Pages 10 to 12]. The usage of brackets and other explanations was taken into consideration, but overall was not deemed necessary aside from the clarification of an acronym that was stated by the interviewee [Page 14 to 18]. (SCBA: Self Contained Breathing Apparatus) After going through the transcript and listening to the audio, the filler or space words such as “um” and “like” were deleted from the transcript to avoid the reflexive phrases from nerves or thoughts [Page 18].