FA-128, A Handbook on Women in Firefighting, January 1993* FA-128/ January 1993 A Handbook on Women in Firefighting The Changing Face of the Fire Service Federal Emergency Management Agency United States Fire Administration The Changing Face of the Fire Service: A Handbook on Women in Firefighting Prepared by: Women in the Fire Service P. O. Box 5446 Madison, WI 53705 608/ 233-4768 Researchers/ Writers: Dee S. Armstrong Brenda Berkman Terese M. Floren Linda F. Willing Disclaimer This publication was prepared for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's U. S. Fire Administration under contract No. EMW-1-4761. Any points of view or opinions expressed in this document do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the U. S. Fire Administration. In August of 1979, the U. S. Fire Administration (USFA) convened a "Women in the Fire Service" seminar in College Park, Maryland. This seminar brought together a group of fire service leaders and others to discuss the relatively new phenomenon of women --perhaps 300 nationwide --employed as firefighters. Today, women in firefighting positions have increased to approximately 3,000. As a result of the symposium, the USFA in 1980 published a document called The Role of Women in the Fire Service. The publication summarized the issues discussed at the seminar, presented the participants' recommendations and personal insights into many aspects of women's work in the fire service, and described existing initiatives and resources in the area. Also in 1980, two manuals were developed as a result of seminar participants' recommendations. The first, a joint project of the USFA and the International Association of Fire Fighters, was a resource directory identifying fire departments that employed women and/ or had experience with recruiting, testing and training women firefighters. The second manual, Personnel Management Handbook: Managing the Entry of Women and Minorities, focused on legal issues, management commitment, recruitment strategies, and the development of entry- level physical fitness standards. The fire service has experienced many changes in the twelve years since the publication of these documents. Some important issues have been resolved, and new ones have moved into the limelight. The number of women working as career firefighters and officers has increased tenfold; some fire departments' suppression forces are now ten percent female or even higher. Several fire departments have employed women firefighters for almost two decades, and many have promoted women upwards through the ranks to district chief and battalion chief positions. Other departments, even large ones, have yet to hire their first women firefighters. The challenge in the development of this document has been to provide a resource useful to all fire service personnel. This new handbook, The Changing Face of the Fire Service, updates the information contained in all three of the earlier documents and reflects a decade of experience and progress. I encourage you to read the handbook from start to finish. The topics reflect important issues of our day. The handbook will serve as a valuable resource to anyone seeking guidance in areas affecting the integration of women into fire suppression positions. We all benefit from a fire service that is inclusive of women at all levels. USFA is committed to promoting an environment where women and men can work harmoniously and productively together to protect our communities. I believe the information contained in this handbook is an important step in achieving that goal. Olin L. Greene U. S. Fire Administrator Introduction. ....................... 4 Women firefighters in the 1990's ............... 6 Tradition, change and women firefighters ....... 9 Recruitment ....................... 10 Entry-level physical testing ................. 27 Firefighter training .................... 38 Policy development .................... 42 Reproductive issues ................. 43 Child care ..................... 48 Firefighter marriages and anti-nepotism policies ..... 49 Firefighter hair standards ............... 50 Station facilities ................... 53 Sexual harassment. .................... 56 Cultural diversity training ................. 67 Ongoing support ..................... 71 Protective clothing fit and safety .............. 74 Bibliography ....................... 81 Appendix 1: Summary of EEO law ............. 84 Appendix 2: An FEP agency finding (on a fire department entry-level physical test) .......... 87 Appendix 3: Resources .................. 91 --3-- Why a manual on women firefighters? Fire may know no gender, but people do, and it is the fire chief's job to manage people much more often than he or she manages fire. Women and minorities are forming an increasing part of the workforce and the labor pool. Fire service managers in the 1990's have an opportunity to attract the best of that pool by creating a work environment that welcomes the participation of all. Facilitating teamwork in a culturally diverse fire department may be the biggest challenge currently facing fire chiefs. Those who are not prepared to manage a diverse workforce may find that the workforce is managing them instead. It's not enough just to say, "We'll hire anyone who meets our standards." How are those standards set? Can they be justified? What happens to someone who "meets the standards" but faces a barrier of hostility and opposition from co- workers? What support systems are available for workers who are not part of the dominant group? Simply having policies in place that appear to be neutral, or are applied equally to everyone, does not necessarily create equal opportunity. Altering the identity of people in a fundamentally unaltered workplace can leave the door open to friction, miscommunication, and a host of inequities that can result in poor performance and a loss of teamwork. Despite repeated claims that "We don't want to reinvent the wheel," fire service leaders continue to ignore the critical lessons learned in other fire departments over the years. The ideas and resources in this handbook have been drawn from the experiences of fire departments across the country over nearly two decades of women's involvement in career-level fire suppression. They are offered to all those in the fire service, career and volunteer alike, who wish to see a smooth transition to a gender-integrated workforce, and to be a progressive and pro-active part of thechanging face of the fire service. This book is particularly created for, and dedicated to, fire service managers. The chances for that smooth transition ride on their commitment and hard work. --4-- How to use this handbook The purpose of this document is to help the fire service manager cope with the firefighting workforce as it changes from an all-male environment to one that includeswomen. The handbookoffers guidance and suggestions from people who have experience and expertise in the areas that affect women's integration into fire suppression ranks. It takes a wide perspective, and, as is appropriate with personnel issues in general, offers choicesand options more often than single "right" answers. The authors hope they have created a guide that, in calling on a wide range of resources, can be useful to a wide range of needs, whether that means one woman firefighter wanting to know where she can find a pair of gloves that fits, or a fire department management team seeking an overview on gender integration issues. The Changing Face of the Fire Service attempts to answer the most frequently asked questions about women in firefighting. It focuses specifically on the issues of recruitment, entry-level physical testing, firefighter training, maternity and reproductive safety, hair-length standards, fire station facilities, sexual harassment, cultural diversity training, ongoing support, and protective gear and uniforms. Each issue is explored from both legal and practical standpoints. In the area of policy development, sample language has been included in some cases. Where it was felt that existing policies would quickly become outdated, guidelines for policy development have been substituted for specific language. Sources for obtaining up-to-date samples of policies are included in the "Resources" section of the manual. The handbook has two specific limitations. Although it has been reviewed by several attorneys, it does not consider the requirements of most state or local laws and regulations. And, while the information in the manual was up-to-date as of mid-1992, many of the legal issues in question are subject to change. The handbook is not intended to be a substitute for qualified legal advice, which should be sought before implementing policies that have legal implications. The Changing Face of the Fire Service was prepared under contract to FEMA by Women in the Fire Service. It was made possible only with the assistance of dozens of individuals from fire departments and other agencies throughout the country who provided information and shared their valuable insights. For this assistance, the researchers and writers of this document offer their sincere thanks. --5 -- As we enter the last decade of the twentieth century, more than 3,000 women are at work in career-level fire suppression positions on 650-plus fire departments in the United States, with hundreds of counterparts in Canada, France, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Thousands of other women work for fire departments in EMS, fire prevention, arson investigation, communications, and public education. Many women firefighters have been promoted to the rank of engineer, lieutenant, or captain, and the numbers of battalion chiefs, division chiefs, and chiefs of department continue to increase. At least twenty women in the U. S. have made their way up through the ranks to the level of division chief, battalion chief, or district chief. Some large cities and many smaller towns and fire districts have women serving on their civilian boards of fire commissioners. While women first became career firefighters just two decades ago, they have served as volunteer firefighters for more than a century. Among the volunteer and paid-on-call fire and EMS forces in the United States are perhaps thirty thousand women firefighters, and thousands more EMT's and paramedics. A large number are officers, including many chiefs of department. Many of these women are dedicated and skilled firefighters and rescue workers with a lifelong commitment to their volunteer departments; others, equally skilled, plan to move on to career positions in the fire service. How many women are volunteer firefighters? Exact numbers on volunteer firefighters are hard to obtain, as the population is highly mobile, and often no system is in place to track it. Most states do not keep accurate or centralized records of firefighters: some do not even know how many firefighters there are in the state. Even states that do keep records often do not have a system that can draw out race or gender statistics on either career or volunteer firefighters. In 1986, however, the National Volunteer Fire Council commissioned a study of volunteer firefighters in five states. 1 Of the volunteer firefighters surveyed, 3.3% were women. Applying this percentage to the country at large provides an estimated number of 42,000 women volunteer firefighters. A few states offer statistics that are much more specific. In Virginia, the Department of Fire Programs publishes an annual profile of minority and women's participation in their Fire Services Training. Their 1991 report indicated that 1,249 of the state's 25,857 fire personnel (assuming all firefighters participated in the training system at some point during the year) were women, or 4.8% of all firefighter participants in the system. Significantly, that number had increased more than 9% from just the preceding year. The report indicated that women represented 2.9% of career firefighters and 5.7% of volunteers. (These are suppression-only numbers: women in strictly EMS roles constituted 38% of participants in the training system.) Extrapolating from these numbers provides a second estimate of the national picture. The percentage of career firefighters in Virginia who are women is slightly more than twice the national average. If we assume this to be true for volunteers as well, we can calculate an estimate of 36,300 women volunteer firefighters in the U. S., as well as a much greater number of women who are volunteer EMT's and paramedics. In Vermont, one of the least populous states, 90 women are volunteer firefighters (including two lieutenantsand one captain), and three women are career firefighters. At the other end of the spectrum is California, which has more than 600 women in career fire suppression roles and an unknown but certainly much greater number who are seasonal or volunteer firefighters. --6-- Numbers and ranks The national women firefighters' organization, Women in the Fire Service, conducts periodic surveys of women firefighters, focusing on career-level women in suppression roles. The most recent one, in 1990, gathered information from 425 women nationwide, of whom 356 were career firefighters or officers. The following profile is taken from the data from that survey. Fire departments that employ women range in size from small combination departments with only a few full-time firefighters, to New York City with its nearly 12,000 line personnel. Percentages of women on those fire departments range from minuscule (one or two women out of several hundred firefighters) to one department whose only paid person in suppression is a woman lieutenant. As of 1992, the suppression forces of several severable fire departments were over or approaching ten percent women: Madison, Wisconsin (31 women out of 260 total firefighters); Montgomery County, Maryland (92 of 900); San Diego (76 of 900). Some smaller departments had even higher percentages: Boulder, Colorado (14 of 72); Davis, California (5 of 40); and Littleton, Colorado (10 of 80). The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which has 3,412 full-time personnel who perform both wildland and structural firefighting, employs some 229 women, the largest number of any single employer. At least 84% of women firefighters on departments represented in the survey had been hired without recourse to court orders or consent decrees. Women are not only firefighters, but officers as well. Among the career ranks in the U. S., there are at least 119 women driver/ engineers (on departments where that is a promoted position), four sergeants, 72 lieutenants, 54 captains, and 21 battalion or division chiefs. Several women are assistant chiefs. At least three women are chiefs of paid or combination fire departments. In addition, some departments with officer ranks in their EMS division have women who are senior paramedics, paramedic lieutenants, or battalion chiefs in charge of EMS. Who are women firefighters? Women in the career fire service come from a wide range of occupational backgrounds, both traditional and non-traditional. Many were teachers or worked in health care (as nurses, EMT's or paramedics); others were in the military, worked as secretaries, or were full-time mothers prior to becoming firefighters. Still other women firefighters come from fields as diverse as carpentry, landscaping, auto parts, and photography. Most women who are career firefighters have college degrees, either two-year or four-year, and several hold masters' or doctoral degrees.* An estimated eleven percent of women career firefighters are African-American. Another four percent are Hispanic, one percent Asian, Native American, or other women of color, and 84% are Caucasian. Forty-one percent are married, 20% are unmarried but in committed relationships with a partner; 39% are single. Thirty- four percent of women firefighters are mothers. Women firefighters at the career level range in age from 21 to their early 50's; women volunteer and cadet firefighters may be as young as 14 or as old as 70. --7-- These statistics demonstrate one thing most clearly: there is no "typical" woman firefighter. Women in the fire service exhibit at least as much collective diversity as fire service men, in terms of age, ethnicity, size, work history, and personal backgrounds. A woman firefighter may be a 23-year-old, 5'4", 120- pound former factory worker who's married and has two children, or a 41-year- old, 5'11", 185-pound former concert violinist who lives alone and climbs mountains in her off-duty time. What these women have in common is their dedication to their work as firefighters, and the intensity of their commitment to the fire service. --8 -- Many people feel that inequality based on sex is natural, functional, and in large measure unalterable. Explanations for inequality that would be unacceptable in the context of race pass without substantial objection in the context of gender: for example, the discredited notion that a woman's hormones would interfere with her ability to be President. Perhaps as a result of these miscon-ceptions, many employers have rejected efforts to promote gender equality because they seemed to be economically unworkable. This attitude has produced long-term costs that are less visible but dramatic: lost talent, heightened turnover, and diminished productivity, to name but a few. Some employers have been reluctant to accommodate employee differences or to reformulate jobs in ways that would allow previously excluded people to perform as well as workers who have been accepted under current standards. (An example would be the purchase of vehicles equipped with power steering, to reduce the amount of upper body strength that drivers need.) This reluctance forms a continuing barrier to equal employment opportunity. Women and minorities, once admitted to an occupation, are expected to accommodate themselves to existing institutional norms; those norms are not expected to change. Providing special treatment for previously excluded groups is criticized. However, "special treatment" is a highly subjective term. The difference between the way "accommodation" provisions in the Americans with Disabilities Act and "special treatment" for women workers are regarded shows this subjectivity very clearly. We applaud moves that make reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities. A slight modification of access can allow a person in a wheelchair to do a job they had been prevented from doing even though they were fully capable of its demands. We have come to recognize that accommodation implies differences, not inferiority. This extends to differences that are not considered disabilities. Fire instructors allow left-handed firefighters to tie knots left-handed even though that isn't the way most people do it; a difference in "handedness" is an acceptable variation. All firefighters applaud advances in technology that allow them to do their jobs more easily: lighter-weight SCBA bottles, pull-out steps or hydraulic racks for mounting ladders on vehicles, wheeled carts for smoke ejectors, pulleys that provide mechanical advantage on ladder halyards. However, the standards for determining when a variation among people is not acceptable, or when a technological advance means that the job is being "made easier" in some unacceptable way, are set from the highly subjective perspective of the dominant group. When is a firefighter "too short to do the job," and when has a ladder simply been placed too high on the vehicle? Techniques and technology that make the job easier are usually hailed as advances. But women's presence on the job often makes such advances suspect: the job is being "made easier" in some illegitimate way so that "unqualified" women can be hired. The change becomes an unacceptable form of "special treatment," even though the result is that the job is made safer and easier for everyone. The fact is that any change that makes the job less physically demanding will both save firefighters' health, safety, and lives, and make the job just a little more possible for someone who wasn't capable of it before. Members of a dominant group within any institution tend to view those who are not members of that group with skepticism. One way this dynamic affects women firefighters is in a strong insistence that they prove themselves by doing everything the hard way. Differences in technique are deemed unacceptable. But the "special treatment" that is criticized in the fire service is defined from a male reference point. If the workplace had been designed for and dominated by women for over a century, what accommodations to male cultural norms would we now regard as "special treatment?" It is not enough just to allow members of traditionally excluded groups to apply for firefighter positions. We must re-think the direction of the fire service. What is "equality of opportunity?" It is not a guarantee, but it must be more than a mere possibility. Changes in firefighter stereotypes will come slowly. But change must come if the fire service is to deliver optimum service to the community. We all have the opportunity to be part of the future by examining our hiring practices, our organizational policies and our own assumptions from a fresh and critical perspective. Notes: 1 Perkins, Kenneth B., "Volunteer Fire Fighters in the United States: A Sociological Profile of America's Bravest," National Volunteer Fire Council, 1987. 2 Willing, Linda F., "Origins: Who We Are and Where We Came From," WFS Quarterly, pp. 4-8. --9-- The true measure of the success of a recruiting drive aimed at women is found... in the number of women who are on the job two or three years later as skilled and productive firefighters. Recruitment is usually the focal point of a fire department's efforts to increase the number of women firefighters on the job. In the traditional view, it consists of the effort that is spent, shortly before an application period opens or an entry-level test is given, to get candidates to apply for job openings. This section of the handbook outlines the basic elements of such recruitment programs and presents some insights from programs that are already in place in various parts of the U. S. A more comprehensive view of recruitment, however, shows that much more is involved in increasing the number of women on the job. This section, therefore, also attempts to expand current approaches to recruitment in two important directions: (1) by emphasizing the importance of laying the necessary groundwork within the department before ever seeking applications from women candidates; and (2) by recognizing the recruitment impact of many fire department activities. The skills and dedication of the people working on recruitment, the creativity that goes into designing the program, and the support -financial, logistical, and verbal -given to the effort by top management, all play important parts in the success of your department's recruitment effort. However, the entire operation can be negated or undermined from within the department. Your recruiters' message will be that your fire department wants women firefighters. If other aspects of your department give out a conflicting message, or if the department is unprepared for the change to a two-gender workforce, much of your recruitment effort will go for nothing. An example will help illustrate this. Suppose that, as a result of recruitment, hundreds of women apply for firefighting positions and show up to take the test. Does that mean your recruitment efforts have been successful? Of course, the answer is, "Not necessarily." Yet many fire departments and recruiters emphasize sheer numbers of women applicants as an indicator of effective recruiting. Giving greater consideration to what you're really trying to accomplish will show this to be short-sighted. The true measure of the success of a recruiting drive aimed at women is found much farther down the road, in the number of women who are on the job two or three years later as skilled and productive firefighters. That involves factors that aren't the job of the recruiters -which is just the point. The out-front recruitment effort is just the tip of the iceberg. Its long-range success hinges as much, or more, on work that must be done elsewhere in the department. If the recruiter's job is to make it known that the department sincerely wants women to work there as firefighters, it is the fire chief's job to make sure that's true. --10-- A pre-recruitment checklist This checklist covers some of the basic preparatory steps that fire department managers can take to make the recruitment of women firefighters more effective, and to insure the retention of those women who are recruited. The application and testing processes: For volunteer fire departments that do not give an entry-level test, has the application process -including both formal and informal elements -been reviewed to insure that it is welcoming of, and accessible to, women? For departments that give an entry-level test, has the testing procedure been established in full detail? Will candidates be informed about the components of the process, the elements of the physical test, how the tests will be administered, how each component will be scored, what constitutes a passing score, and how the final ranking on the eligible list (or determination of who is hired) will be made? If your entry-level physical test is one that women pass at a significantly lower rate than men, has it been locally validated, based on a job analysis conducted by an outside expert? Can the scoring system used on the test be justified as accurately predicting job performance? Do those who score lower on the test make less competent firefighters, after they have been trained, than those who scored higher? Has the pass/ fail point been set by testing a random sample of firefighters already on the job? Have trainable items on the test been kept to a minimum? Have those who will be administering the test been instructed on what variations in technique on the test events will be permitted? Will a variety of safe and effective techniques for completing the events be permitted and demonstrated? If candidates will wear items of protective gear during the test, are these available in sizes to fit all candidates? If test practice sessions will be held, are instructors or assistants for the practice sessions familiar with techniques that may be more effective for women and/ or shorter individuals? Has there been good coordination between these instructors and the people who will administer the test, so that all permissible techniques are demonstrated, and accurate information about times, items and evolutions used on the test, and the sequence of events, will be given out? [See section on entry-level physical testing for more information.] Policy development and review Have an anti-harassment policy and complaint procedure been implemented and publicized? Do personnel understand the procedure for filing sexual harassment complaints, and do they trust the effectiveness and confidentiality of the process? Has cultural diversity and/ or anti-harassment training been conducted for all personnel and been incorporated into the recruit school curriculum? Does the department have policies in place regarding maternity and fire department marriages? Have policies regarding hair length and personal grooming been reviewed? [See sections on sexual harassment, cultural diversity training, and policy deve1opment.] --11-- A pre-recruitment checklist, continued Recruit training Does the training staff have a positive attitude towards training women, and are they knowledgeable about cultural barriers that may exist for women coming onto the job? Are all instructors available after hours for additional assistance if requested? Have interested women been detailed to the training academy as instructors or assistants? Has the training curriculum been examined to see if it implicitly expects new recruits to have particular skills or backgrounds? Are there ways to impart this information or attitudes, or these skills, to those who don't possess them? Has the training staff been clearly instructed on how to handle difficulties faced by new recruits: how to document any problems, how to assist in the learning process? Are performance criteria for training clear and will they be clearly explained and/ or distributed to all recruits so they know what is expected of them? Are recruits taught skills (hands-on, not just observation) before being evaluated on them, and will recruits be informed at what point evaluations will take place? Do training dynamics give recruits a stake in each other's success and promote cooperation and teamwork? [See section on training.] Gear and facilities Are uniforms available in women's cuts and sizes? Will properly fitting protective gear be available to all firefighter recruits from the time it is first needed in training? Does the training center offer adequate, private facilities for both sexes: not just restrooms, but changing areas and showers? Are all fire stations adequate in their facilities for a workforce that includes people of both sexes? If not, has a plan or timetable been implemented to make them adequate? Will women be permitted to work at any station, regardless of whether the station has "facilities for women?" [See sections on facilities and uniforms /protective gear.] What is clear from this checklist is that most of the issues that arise when a fire department becomes gender-integrated should be considered before recruitment ever begins. A fire department that has little management commitment to hiring women, an unvalidated speed-to-completion entry-level physical test, haphazard training, hair-length standards designed for men, and a" We'l1 deal with it when it happens" approach to maternity leave, is showing that it truly does not care what happens to any women who might be hired. As one fire chief said, "It was hard to get women to come on the job, because the men didn't want them." Potential recruits are unlikely to be motivated to join a department on which they are unwelcome. In addition, women firefighters who have been asked to be involved in the recruitment effort may be reluctant to do so, since they know the problems that any women coming on the job will face. It will be difficult, both practically and ethically, to recruit women into such a work environment. --12-- A fire department's real recruiting effort, like its publiceducation work, goes on all year round. Volunteer fire departments, many of which are in constant need of new members, already know this. Whether consciously or otherwise, a fire department recruits new members and gives out information about itself all the time. Being aware of the recruitment potential of everything the department does will be both efficient and productive. The women and the people of color currently on the department should be included in all of the department's public activities. Firefighters "self-recruit" -that is, attract more people just like them -because of their visibility. If the only firefighters who are visible are white men, that's largely who will be recruited. Make sure that every time the department is in the public eye, and especially when it is being televised, the diversity of your department is visible. Maintain a consistent commitment to non-sexist attitudes and language. Using and encouraging gender-neutral language is an important statement. For example, does your local newspaper still refer to firefighters -of either sex-as "firemen?" A letter to the editor from the fire chief will not only help get the practice stopped, but will in itself demonstrate your department's commitment to fairness and diversity. In addition to maximizing the department's public appearances to benefit recruitment, specific steps, such as those described below, can be taken to encourage potential candidates to consider, and prepare for, firefighter jobs. These are all long-term efforts that will only produce results over the course of years. If you do not undertake them now, however, your department will continue to be in the position of having to depend on short-term recruitment to attract women who have never before considered becoming firefighters. The more information about the job you can provide to possible future employees, the easier it will be to locate and attract good, qualified personnel. Vocational counselors Develop and maintain a good relationship with high school guidance counselors and with career-placement personnel and vocational counselors at the colleges and universities in your area. These people can be where you can not: in contact with young people who are making career decisions. Are the counselors in your colleges and high schools currently encouraging young women to consider fire service careers? It's most likely that they are not. Make sure they are aware of your department's interest in hiring women firefighters, and provide supplies of literature, videotapes, and other information for them. Invite them to orientation sessions, or consider holding special sessions for counselors to discuss the ways you and they can work together. Introductory programs These efforts can be a productive way to recruit new firefighters who, by the time they complete the program, will be familiar with your department's operations and may possess basic firefighter training as well. Such programs include Explorer posts (open to young men and women 14-21 years of age), high- school or vocational school "fire cadet" programs, ride-alongs for community members, resident student programs (where students bunk in the stations and, after completing basic firefighter training, ride along on calls). All of these can be effective recruiting tools. They will be effective at recruiting women only if you make sure they are inclusive of women, and that women are specifically sought as participants. Extended contact with potential candidates Many elements of a recruiting program can easily be kept operating at all times. Periodic open houses, practice test sessions, and orientation sessions for potential candidates can motivate candidates far in advance of test dates, allowing more time for them to develop their strengths and skills or to seek relevant education. The fire department, or the personnel department, should accept job interest cards at all times, even when a test is not planned. To keep the data base current these could have a one-or two-year expiration date, at which time a card would be sent out to verify the individual's continued interest. A verification card could also be sent out if a hiring process opens up and the person does not apply; those who do should automatically be kept on the list for another year or two years. These are all long-term efforts that will only produce results over the course of years. If you do not undertake them now, however, your department will continue to be in the position of having to depend on short-term recruitment to attract women who have never before considered becoming firefighters. --13-- Some fire departments do a general publicity and recruitment drive when their test is announced, or -for volunteer departments -when more firefighters are needed. The purpose of the drive is to get job information to as many potential applicants as possible. Many departments, however, have found that large numbers of well-qualified white male applicants will apply for firefighter positions even if the openings are not publicized at all. This can be because of a strong family-and-friends tradition within the department, or more generally because white men as a group are well aware that the fire service is a career option for them. The department decides then to focus its limited resources of time and money on a recruitment effort that targets those groups that are underrepresented in the workforce or applicant pool. No one is discouraged from applying for the job, but the tendency for the existing workforce to "self-recruit" is counterbalanced by publicity aimed at those who might not otherwise apply. Setting up a recruitment program involves planning, commitment, creativity, and may require the coordinated work of a number of people from different departments. A recruiting drive can be as basic as one person with a slide show working for three weeks, or as complex as a fully staffed division operating over the course of a year. The exact details of the effort will vary considerably depending on several factors, including: The size and resources of the particular fire department; The goals of the recruitment program; The amount of time available for recruiting; The make-up of the community and the nature of the labor pool; and The creativity and enthusiasm of the people involved in designing and delivering the program. Whatever its dimensions, a well-designed and carefully organized recruitment program will always bring greater success than one that is haphazard or based on misconceptions. Certain key elements will be present, in one form or another, in any effective and successful recruitment drive. These elements, all of which are discussed in detail on the following pages, include: Management support; Careful recruitment team selection; Realistic schedule design; Recruitment materials aimed at the target group; Publicity within the community; Effective use of the media; and Orientation sessions and open houses. Management support The top individuals in the fire department must be firmly behind the recruitment and integration of women into the department. All aspects of the recruiting effort must reflect management's sincerecommitment not only to bring women firefighters onto the department but to support a diverse fire service workforce. Management can support recruitment in the following crucial ways: Obtaining the funding necessary to make the program a success, either by making it a priority within the department's budget, seeking additional city funds (such as from the personnel department or any agencies concerned with equal employment opportunity), or obtaining donations from sources in the community; Making other departmental resources available to maximize the allocated money (reassigning fire personnel and support staff, vehicles, office space), and borrowing or getting access to other city resources (prior applicant lists for non-traditional jobs from the personnel department, photographic and darkroom work from the police department, audiovisual equipment and expertise, etc.) Working with other city departments as needed to obtain adequate lead time (the time between the announcement of the test date and the actual date, during which most short-term recruitment will be done) and to settle any other jurisdictional or political problems. For example, restrictions on how applications are given out can make it more difficult for women to obtain them. One fire department required applicants to come to its headquarters in person to pick up the necessary forms; the headquarters building was in a high-crime area, and numerous assaults on women had taken place in nearby parking garages. Making the forms easier to get will make it more likely that women will apply. Since this is often an inter-jurisdictional matter (that is, not one that the fire department itself controls), management's influence can be crucial in making the necessary changes. Demonstrating leadership by representing the program positively to elected officials in order to obtain their support, and by making public statements, particularly in the media, in support of the recruitment effort and of hiring women and minorities. --14 -- Consider carefully before you emphasize numbers as a measure of the success of your recruitment effort, either publicly or within thedepartment. If potentialcandidates and incumbent firefighters perceive (correctly or incorrectly) that management just wants to hire women to get numbers to fill a hiring goal, the sincerity and effectiveness of your recruitment will be severely undermined. The message that "We want to hire ten women" implies two things, and both of them are negative: (1) that you will hire ten women just to hire women, even if not all of them are qualified, and (2) that if more than ten qualified women apply, you will not hire all of them. It also can make your recruitment drive appear to have been a failure if you "only" end up hiring nine women. Instead, consider making a positive "goals statement" that emphasizes your commitment to diversify your firefighting workforce and to support its diversity in meaningful ways. For example, one fire department said in its advertisements: We are looking for professionals who want to be part of a progressive, innovative fire department. Our goal is to have a workforce that reflects the diversity of our community. Women and people of color are especially encouraged to apply. Recruitment team selection Select members of your recruitment team who have the qualities that will make them effective at their job. Too often, recruiters are chosen for reasons that make sense from a limited perspective but are irrelevant or unproductive for the purposes of recruitment, such as: S/he has "always been in charge" of recruiting; S/he is injured or pregnant and needs a light-duty assignment, or for some other reason seeks a 40-hour schedule; or S/ he belongs to the group that is being targeted for recruitment (e. g., people of color, women, paramedics, college graduates.) All of these practices can create problems. People who have "always" done recruitment will usually continue to produce the kind of candidates they have produced in the past. If these are not the people you're looking for, it could be time to make a staffing change. A firefighter who has been removed from the line due to injury or some other reason is usually chosen for the department's convenience, notbecause of the individual' s qualifications to be a good recruiter. (If such people should happen to possess the skills you need, however, they certainly should not be overlooked.) And although it is less obvious, the same is true of firefighters or officers who belong to the targeted group. Women currently on the job who have an interest in recruitment should be used in recruiting drives. The critical point at which to do so, however, is at orientation sessions and other public-contact points where women who are potential candidates will want to hear from, and ask questions of, women who are currently on the job. But a good speaker or advocate is not necessarily a good program manager. Often, women firefighters who are assigned to coordinate recruiting programs have few credentials for the job and, in some cases, little interest in it. By all means, take advantage of the abilities and interest of those women who do want to be involved; they're highly valuable to you. Don't, however, assume that someone will be a good recruit-program coordinator just because she's a woman and a firefighter. Identify the skills you will need on the recruiting team before you select its members. Interest in, and commitment to, the recruiting drive, are prerequisites: no one should be chosen who does not want to be involved. Useful skills and traits include: Education and experience in marketing and public relations; Graphic arts skills; Writing skills; Public speaking skills; Interpersonal skills for speaking with individual candidates; Computer literacy: word processing, data-base management, and desktop publishing; Bilingual ability, if your community is ethnically diverse; and Ties with target groups. No individual will possess all of these traits. Diversity on the team is important for that reason, as well as to provide the flexibility and the range of creativity that will permit a variety of approaches. The recruitment coordinator and other top recruiters must also have good organizational skills and be able to work well together in a concerted effort. The people involved in the recruitment program may come from various areas both within and outside the department. They may include firefighters, non- suppression fire department personnel, support staff from the department or loaned from elsewhere in the city or county, community volunteers, and members of other local fire departments (if your own department has no women, or if you are participating in joint recruitment). Smaller departments may also need to borrow the clerical or computer services of other city departments. Whatever the size of your department, tap the resources you already possess. A recruitment program is very similar to a public education effort, and your public education staff should be a gold mine of assistance. They know how to scale a "motivational" message to a target audience and present that message in a way the audience will understand and respond to. Similarly, your public information officer has skills and contacts that can be very useful in designing and distributing press releases and in assuring media coverage of recruitment events. --15-- An Incident Command approach to recruitment team function This outline identifies the tasks or functions that must be included in a recruitment program. As with an emergency incident command system, the important part is not the title or rank of an individual in any particular role, but that the function is assigned to someone who will be responsible for its accomplishment. Upper management representative: -Oversees the recruitment effort and pre-training program -Authorizes necessary expenditures -Reports on the programs to chief of department, city manager, council, etc. -Attends Steering Committee meetings to get the committee's input Recruitment Coordinator: -Develops and implements the overall recruitment plan -Under direction of upper management, develops recruiting/ pre-training staff. -Coordinates overall program: materials development, scheduling, roles of staff members -Maintains records of all recruitment activities, including candidate data base -Provides progress reports to upper management -Sits on Steering Committee Human Resources Manager: -Provides orientation and sensitivity training to recruitment/pre-training staff -Works with media coordinator in developing outreach materials -Sits on Steering Committee Media Coordinator: -Develops all advertising, press releases, PSA's, flyers, brochures, and posters to be used in the recruitment effort -Schedules press interviews, coverage of events, advertising placement -Coordinates production and distribution of outreach materials -Works with support staff during photographing/ videotaping for the recruitment and pre-training efforts -Sits on Steering Committee The Steering Committee includes a representative of upper management, the Recruitment Coordinator, the Human Resources Manager, the Media Coordinator, and the 40-hour recruitment/ pre-training staff members. It also includes representatives from community organizations used for recruitment and pre- training classes. The Committee meets weekly to coordinate all recruitment and pre-training activities and resources. Pre-training Coordinators: -Should have background in exercise physiology and/ or physical test preparation, particularly dealing with women candidates -Develop and implement written and physical pre-training programs for candidates -Work with community organizations to schedule and conduct pre-training classes Recruiters: -Include at least one representative (preferably two) from each group that is being targeted in the recruitment effort, and others as needed -Staff the intake office -Contact community groups to schedule orientations and drop off materials -Attend orientations, special events, and pre-training sessions -Perform canvassing and retention -Provide data entry and record-keeping as needed Support Services: -Attend to supplies and housekeeping needs -Coordinate vehicles for recruitment purposes -Coordinate audiovisual equipment needs -Design and care for portable recruitment booth -Do all departmental paperwork: log work time, send in payroll records, log vehicle mileage, gas and maintenance, etc. [Thanks to the San Francisco Fire Department for providing the model on which this outline is based.] Community volunteers can be used to distribute literature and to make contacts with various community groups. Small departments with limited budgets may be able to find volunteers within the community who will donate their professional skills to design a brochure. Local businesses may be willing to donate all or part of the cost of printing literature and posters for the recruitment drive. Cable access television channels may provide video production equipment and editing facilities. Fitness centers and gyms may be willing to offer discount memberships to firefighter applicants who are preparing for the testing process. Realistic schedule design The coordinator of your recruitment effort will be responsible for its general design. This means determining which fire department and community resources are to be used, what kind of media publicity will be required, what the priority markets are, and what is to be done when. The first step is to make a checklist of all of the tasks to be completed. This will include items such as: Develop the budget for the recruitment program, based on total allotted funds and any donated resources; Identify useful community resources, make preliminary contact with key individuals in each group, and get information on when regular meetings or special events are coming up; Identify career fairs and similar events that are scheduled during the recruitment period Write and reproduce brochures, test information, and other literature; Design and print posters and other items requiring graphic art or photography; Contact the media: write television and radio public service announcements (PSA's), write newspaper advertisements and press releases; arrange for newspaper articles and television news coverage; Produce videotapes for orientation sessions and test familiarization; Schedule orientation sessions; Set up "open house" dates at fire stations; Set up physical test practice sessions and written test study sessions; and Get the logistical support you will need: vehicles, office space and supplies, phone lines, answering machine, chairs, audio-visual equipment, security for office use at night, etc. Next, arrange the tasks into a schedule, time-line, or action plan. This should include when each task must be done, who will do it, how long it will take, what resources will be needed to carry it out, etc. Allow time for Recruitment efforts must be given adequate time in order to be effective, particularly when the recruitment is aimed at women. unforeseen delays: don't schedule a major event for the day after needed materials are due from the printer. If bad weather might force cancellation of a specific event, schedule an alternate date in advance. Recruitment efforts must be given adequate time in order to be effective. This is particularly true when the recruitment is aimed at women. Deciding to become a firefighter is not an easy decision for many women. Issues of self-image and self-confidence, a partner or spouse who may not be supportive or understanding, the demands of family responsibilities, and the risk involved in leaving a job to start something new and uncertain, all frequently arise and can not always be resolved quickly. Women may also need time in which to prepare for the physical test and the physical demands of the job. If you are limited by decisions made in other departments -for example, Personnel or Civil Service sets the test date, and will only give you a few weeks' notice -many of the above items can be developed in advance and kept on hold until the date is known. For example, you can write a budget, contact community resource people, select your program staff and coordinator, establish a time line to be put into operation once the date is known, and draft your written materials (leaving the date and other undetermined factors blank). You can also make a videotape that explains and demonstrates the testing process, if the test will not be changed before it is administered. Contact friendly reporters with the local papers and television stations to let them know the type of events you'll be offering them a chance to cover once recruitment is underway. Fire departments that can not obtain adequate lead time for an effective recruitment drive must also rely heavily on the ongoing, year-round types of recruitment discussed on page 13. Recruitment materials aimed at the target group In designing and writing recruitment materials, remember that you are trying to appeal to a different group of candidates from those who have traditionally applied for the job. Specifically recruiting women to become firefighters is not just a matter of going to places where there are lots of women -even lots of women who are likely candidates -and handing out the usual information about application deadlines and test dates. The content and image of your recruiting message must be different and must address cultural preconceptions that women have about themselves and the job. A --17 -- brochure or insert specifically aimed at women candidates can be highly effective at delivering your message. Your primary piece of recruitment literature should be a brochure that presents information about three things: the job of firefighting, your fire department, and the upcoming testing process. The design should be simple enough that your budget can afford to have hundreds or thousands of copies printed and your recruiters will be able to distribute them widely. Some departments have these produced professionally and find the results well worth the investment. However, it is quite possible to put out a high-quality product in-house if no funds are available for outside assistance. A compromise is to have a single sheet or folded flyer produced professionally, that contains information that will not change (about the job and the department), and add or insert into this material produced by the department. Because the cover sheet or exterior of the flyer can be used for several years, you will not have to reinvest in its production, and you can take advantage of volume discounts in the original printing. Your own added material, which contains information about the next test, current salary and benefits, etc., keeps the literature up to date. If the outside of the brochure leaves space for an address and postage, mailing the information to interested candidates will be much easier. It is important that the text of the brochure explains all aspects of the firefighter's job, including both its demands and its rewards. Women tend to be attracted to firefighting for the same reasons men are: the challenge of a physically demanding job, the rewards of performing a service to the community, and good pay and benefits. All of these should be emphasized. In writing your brochure, keep in mind how little the average non-firefighter knows about firefighting and about the other work that firefighters perform. Women in particular may have preconceptions about the job that are inaccurate and can either keep them from applying or can lead to problems later on, if the job turns out to be different from what they expected. Do not understate the risks involved in the job, but don't overemphasize them, either. Make it clear that all recruits will be fully trained by the department before ever being put into an emergency situation, and that safety is always a priority. Discuss recruit training: how long it lasts, what the schedule is, what is taught. If your station facilities are designed to accommodate a two-gender workforce, be sure to mention (or show photos of) that. The recruitment brochure should use gender-neutral language. This not only means saying "he or she" instead of "he," but also substituting terms like "staffing" for "manning," and saying "women," not "females." Little things count, and they contribute in big ways to the impression you make. The overall message should not be that women can manage to perform the job of firefighter and somehow fit into a "man's" job, but that women can Recruiting women as volunteer firefighters Volunteer fire departments vary even more widely than career departments in their acceptance of women firefighters. At their best, they welcome anyone who has the abilities and dedication required to be a firefighter. Many women have received strong support from the men on their volunteer fire departments, and many volunteer departments have women lieutenants, captains, and even chiefs. At the other end of the spectrum are volunteer fire departments that adhere rigidly to a "white men only" tradition, excluding others either by specific prohibition or by the force of custom. People of color and women who do manage to join departments of this sort often face multiple barriers such as isolation, lack of training, and overt forms of harassment. The legality of maintaining a sex-segregated volunteer fire department is a question that must be answered on a case-by-case or state-by-state basis. Some states, such as New Jersey, consider volunteer firefighters to be employees for the purposes of Title VII, which means that sex discrimination against a volunteer firefighter or applicant is illegal. In other states, this is not the case. [See Appendix 1 for more informatiom.] The issue is irrelevant, however, to a discussion on recruiting women firefighters, since departments that wish to exclude women are unlikely to spend time actively recruiting them. Women's participation in volunteer fire departments goes back more than a century, and for many (if not most) volunteer departments that have seen their numbers dwindle over the last twenty years, the question is not, "How can we keep women out?" but "How can we get more to join?" Most of the issues discussed in this section of the manual apply in some form to volunteer departments. The scale, economics, and some of the details differ, but the work and traditions of firefighting are the same. For example: Volunteer fire departments often do not have entry-level physical or written tests. However, it is wise to assess the entry process that candidates must go through to become volunteers. Does it contain elements that make it easier for women to be excluded, such as a provision that all applicants must be voted on by existing members? Policies and education against sexual harassment are just as important in volunteer departments as they are in career departments; perhaps even more so in states which do not offer employment-discrimination protection to volunteer firefighters. Short-term child care during emergency calls will often be a significant issue for women volunteer firefighters and firefighter couples. Creative solutions can both take care of the problem and demonstrate your department's support for women. Volunteer fire departments will usually need to rely more on donated resources in order to put together a recruitment effort. The positive side of this is that people in smaller communities served by volunteer departments are much more likely to donate their time and expertise than they would to a large, career- level city department. Most volunteer fire departments are constantly seeking new members. Giving attention to the above issues, and adapting the suggestions presented throughout this section to your department's specific needs, should make it more likely that your department will be able to attract and retain more women firefighters in the future. and do enjoy productive fire service careers. Photos or drawings in the brochure should include people of both sexes and a variety of ages, sizes, and ethnic backgrounds. Your literature should include the customary information on pay, hours and benefits, pension system, number of stations the department has, average call load, and so forth. It should also provide clear explanations of the following items: Details of the application, testing and hiring processes, including age limits for hiring, eyesight requirements, medical examination, and drug screening; How and where to get application forms; Whether applications will be available by mail or can be picked up by one person for another; What to bring if applications must be picked up in person (for example, to prove identity, citizenship, or city residency); Whether turning in an application early can confer any advantage, such as in the case of a scoring tie, or if a limited number of applications will be given out; and Whether applications must be filled out on the spot, or may be returned by mail. Information on the testing process should clearly state which test will be given first, and when and how --19 -- applicants will be notified whether they have passed and if they are to go on to the next step in the process. If handbooks or other study materials will be distributed for the written test, include information on where and how to obtain them. Explain in detail what is included on the physical test and how it will be administered and scored. List the dates and places of test practice sessions, or provide a phone number to call for this information. If child care will be available at practice sessions or at the test itself, publicize that. Provide information on other resources that may be available, either through the fire department or elsewhere, such as through the union, other firefighters' groups, and the community. These resources might include the following: A videotape about the physical test that explains all of its components and demonstrates techniques that may be used to accomplish them; Weight-training classes or gym memberships; Current firefighters who will serve as mentors to candidates; "Open house" dates or other opportunities for station visits; Test-taking study sessions, support groups, and/ or assistance in finding a weight-training partner. All recruitment literature, whether it is contracted out to a private company or produced by one firefighter with a desktop publishing program on a home computer, must be neat and professional in appearance. Literature that looks sloppy, contains misspellings and grammatical or typographical errors, and generally appears to have been hastily done and given low priority, makes a negative statement about both your department and your commitment to recruiting women. Current computer and printer technology make it possible to produce attractive, professional materials at very little expense. Take advantage of this. Have someone from outside proofread the material, not only for errors but to see if it will make sense to someone who is unfamiliar with the fire service. If you're using an outside agency, check their text for correct use of terminology. Most non-firefighters don't know that a fire engine is not a fire truck, and even the fire service itself doesn't agree on what a "rescue unit" is. Posters. Fire departments that have asked applicants how they learned about job openings have often found that posters are a low-percentage effort. (The winners? Newspapers, direct mailing of literature to potential candidates, and knowing someone on the department who told them about the job.) Posters are usually produced outside the department, due to the technical demands of the process; in any case, if you plan to go to the expense of producing and distributing posters, they should be of a professional quality. The typical poster consists of a color or black-and-white photo and a caption such as "Can you fill these shoes?" (with a photo of fire boots), "We're looking for a few good women," or "It takes all kinds to make a fire department." Posters may be effective recruiting tools if they are well designed to appeal to your target group, and if they are placed in the right locations. They may work better in smaller towns than in big cities where there is more competition for people's visual attention. They may possibly be more effective for long-range recruitment, if they are posted in places where they can remain for some time and more people will see them. As a courtesy to the businesses or other agencies where you are placing the posters, send someone around to collect them once the information is no longer valid. Posters that are placed where they can be easily vandalized or graffitied-over should be checked periodically for replacement or removal. Videotapes. Videotape technology has created a revolution in information-sharing that the fire service has only begun to exploit. It is relatively inexpensive to produce videotapes and make them available to support your recruitment drive. One tape should deal with your entry-level physical test, demonstrating each element of the test both separately and as it fits into the testing process. Use women and smaller men among those demonstrating the test items and evolutions, particularly those events that are most affected by height and leverage. Make sure that your test will not change after the videotape is made: the tape must be accurate and give as much helpful information as possible. The tape should be available to loan out. If your department does not wish to handle the paperwork aspects of this, you may be able to negotiate an arrangement with local video rental stores. You may also wish to develop a videotape for use at orientation sessions and other informational events (booths at Career Fairs, etc.) This tape should talk about the job, and about being a woman firefighter, from the woman's perspective. It might include footage from actual fires, training sessions, "life in the station" scenes, and interviews with women firefighters on the job and at home. Be sure to include a number of women in order to show a diversity of backgrounds, sizes, ages, and personalities. You may be able to negotiate with local video rental stores to piggyback a copy of your videotape onto specific movies as they are rented. You would provide a number of copies of your tape, to be rubber-banded to the boxes containing the movie tapes. Although a major motion picture about firefighting won't come along every time you want to recruit, this option gives you an opportunity to target very specifically the groups you wish to reach, through the films they are most likely to rent. --20-- Publicity within the community Following are examples of locations or organizations where you may find it most effective to publicize job openings, place posters and /or leave flyers, and speak to interested groups or to individual women. Colleges and universities* High schools, if your minimum hiring age is eighteen Athletic clubs, teams, and events: -Universities, colleges, and community colleges -Women's softball, basketball, and volleyball leagues -Runs and triathlons -Area women's powerlifting and body-building competitions -Self-defense training schools Gyms and fitness centers Career fairs Explorer posts Military bases and discharge centers Factories and union offices Local women's advocacy groups, Women's Commissions, YWCA, 4-H, Girl Scouts, American Association of University Women, etc. Local minority-employment and tradeswomen's networks Church and other groups in ethnic communities Other departments within your city or county government: water, parks and recreation, sanitation, etc. Area agencies that offer fire recruit training Local volunteer fire departments, and smaller career departments, particularly if your department does not have a residency requirement Non-suppression employees of the fire department, and family members and friends of current firefighters and police officers, are two more key sources of potential recruits. These individuals are already familiar with the rewards and demands of the job, and often with the functioning of the department. Use your incumbent personnel as recruiters not only with the public but with people they know personally. Effective use of the media The media are the least expensive and most useful resource of your recruitment effort. At very little cost to you, they deliver your message into the homes of thousands of community residents. Not only should you use them for classified ads and public service announcements, but they will often be more than willing to cover your recruitment events as news or feature stories. Smaller-town newspapers are especially useful for this: they usually are in greater need of material, and subscribers often read the paper in great detail. A number of fire departments have gotten the media to cover their recruitment drives by inviting a woman reporter to go through the physical test, or to spend a day in the station. This can be a bit of a gamble: if the reporter can't complete any of the test events, the job will seem off-limits to women. Providing the reporter with some preliminary training on the events, or suggesting that the station or paper send a reporter who is physically fit and active, may help. It can also be beneficial to have a woman firefighter go through the events (successfully!) at the same time the reporter does, especially if cameras are present. *You may wish to target specific academic areas that you feel will benefit your department: not just fire science programs. but social services or education. for example. Fire departments that provide wildland fire protection might look for candidates with forestry backgrounds. --21-- Encourage reporters to promote the idea that being a firefighter is neither easy nor impossible for women; point to the number of skilled and successful women already on the job in your department and/ or across the country. Reporters will usually be grateful for a fact sheet that provides such information about women firefighters, to use as background for their stories. Providing this information will help prevent the media from portraying women firefighters as unusual, even if the women you are recruiting will be the first ones in your department. Local cable access channels will usually be glad to show your orientation videotape if you provide them with copies. This can also be done in conjunction with an interview and/ or call-in show where representatives of the fire department discuss firefighting as a career for women and give information about the current recruitment effort. The broadcast media are required to dedicate a certain amount of free air time to public service announcements (PSA's). Fire departments can take advantage of these to publicize their recruiting drives. Videotaped television spots should include visuals of women firefighters on the job. Radio announcements, and television spots that do not have visuals, should use women's voices. The text of your PSA's should be consistent with your written handout material; in fact, much of the text can come directly from your literature. If your department is large, is located in an attractive area, offers particularly good pay and benefits, or is able to hire firefighters from elsewhere on a lateral-entry basis, consider advertising nationally in fire service trade journals or tradeswomen's publications. Keep in mind, though, that monthly periodicals often require a lengthy lead time; be prepared to submit material to them well in advance. Orientation sessions and open houses A key element of recruitment involves speaking to groups of potential candidates. Hold orientation sessions at times and locations that are convenient to your target audience. Providing child care during the session will not only make it possible for more women to attend, but will demonstrate your department's commitment to hiring women. Speakers at the sessions should include firefighters and officers, both women and men, of varying ethnic and personal backgrounds. Their material should include a basic description of what firefighters do, in down-to-earth and unglamorized terms, as well as of the testing and training procedure. Women firefighters should talk about their experience on the job: what it's been like, why they enjoy it. An officer should be present to reaffirm the fire department's commitment to cultural diversity and equal employment opportunity. All speakers should be positive about the job, honest about its demands, and accessible to candidates' questions. Showing your recruitment videotape at the beginning should reduce the amount of time needed for questions. You also may wish to have personal protective equipment or fire apparatus on hand for candidates to handle or see. Distribute applications to all those who are interested, if your personnel system allows you to do so. If not, it may allow you to distribute interest cards by which individuals can request that an application be mailed to them. If even this is not possible, at least have each attendee fill out a card with his/ her name, address, and phone number. The blank cards should be coded in some method for entry into your data base, so that later on you can evaluate which events were the most productive. "Open house" sessions provide a chance for candidates to come into selected fire stations, view the apparatus and facilities, and talk with firefighters and officers. When scheduling these events, consider the suitability of the particular crew for such visits, the convenience of the time and location for the target audience, type of apparatus and station responsibilities (SCUBA team, Hazmat unit), etc. Recruitment staff should be present, particularly if you don't plan to take the station out of service. Some fire departments offer open houses on a regularbasis as part of their year-round recruitment effort, as well as for community and neighborhood relations. Your fire stations should function as recruitment outposts during the entire recruitment drive. Copies of recruitment literature and, if possible, applications, should be available at all stations. All department personnel should be able to answer basic questions about the testing and hiring processes. In some fire departments, the testing procedure alone takes many weeks; months or even years can elapse between the first orientation session and the day a new firefighter is actually hired. Fire departments unnecessarily lose many good candidates during this time. Throughout the application and hiring process, the more contact you can maintain between women candidates and the fire department, or among the women who are trying to get on the job, the less likely you are to lose them and the more likely they are to maintain their interest and motivation. Pre-training programs are one method of maintaining contact. (See boxes On pages 23 and 25 for examples.) This time can also be used to help candidates prepare for the upcoming testing process. Physical test preparation sessions Physical test practice and preparation sessions provide another method of maintaining contact with applicants. These sessions also accomplish the following: --22 -- One fire department's pre-training program The policy of the Los Angeles City Fire Department since it began hiring women in the mid-1980's has been to provide pre-training to help women who need physical conditioning and strength development order to pass the department's entry-level physical in test. Following are the basic components of their program. The department's Tutorial Program is eight weeks long. Candidates are not screened, and participation is voluntary. The tutorial program allows women candidates to develop their strength and cardiovascular fitness through an intensive program of specificity training with weights, traditional weight training, and aerobic conditioning. The specificity training course was set up under the guidance of kinesiologists and exercise physiologists in 1989, modifying the department's original weight-training program. It involves exercises duplicating the exact physical requirements of the entry-level test. The program also provides participants with an orientation to the fire department and its operations. Training sessions -one and one-half hours a night, three nights a week -are held at the fire department's training center; the staff consists of one fire captain, two firefighters, and a weight training coach. In addition, videotaped instruction by women firefighters on the fitness program is provided. Women who can not attend the academy classes have the option of going through the program on an independent basis at private health clubs or school gyms. Candidates are given diagnostic evaluations to monitor their progress and to determine their ability to perform the exercises that will be required in the next part of the program, preparing them for the physical test. At the end of the program, following a successful strength/ conditioning evaluation, medical examination, and personal history examination by the Personnel Department, a group of candidates is selected to continue into the Pre-Trainee Program. Three weeks before the next phase begins, candidates receive a final evaluation, which they must pass in order to proceed. Those who are not selected are permitted to repeat the tutorial program. The next stage is the Pre-Trainee Program. Its participants, all women, receive trainee firefighter salaries (2/ 3 of beginning firefighter pay). It is an [Captain James W. Bird is the designer and administrator eight-week, forty-hour/ week program of "specificity of the programs described here. See his article in Fire strength/ conditioning" training. Four to five hours a day are spent in exercise training; the remainder is devoted to classes and instruction: an introduction to the fire department, oral interview skills, and the safe use of tools. At the end of the program, the candidates take the department's entry- level physical test; those who pass go on to the oral interview, which determines their position on the eligible list. (The requirements of the department's written test are satisfied with successful completion of the academic portion of the Pre-Trainee Program.) Those scoring within an acceptable range -comparable to male candidates being considered for employment-will be considered for one of the next training academies. A group of ten to twenty men and women then enter the Trainee Program. Participants receive trainee salaries. Academic training includes listening skills, readingcomprehension, note-taking skills, and other study habits. It also includes the EMT course and certification. Participants receive a copy of the department's drill manual and recruit training manual and are familiarized with these documents. The physical program includes daily weight training, as well as basic ladder and hose operations. Class size typically has been between -eight and 25 trainees; however, due to budget constraints no classes were conducted during the 1991-92 fiscal year. Subsequent staffing shortages led to a modified, accelerated hiring program of much larger classes in 1992-93. The program is staffed by four captains and four firefighters. The Los Angeles City Fire Department's Training Academy is a ten-week basic recruit school teaching fire suppression and rescue activities. Trainees receive entry-level firefighter pay, Staffing consists of four captains and four firefighters. The Tutorial and Pre-Trainee Programs were created in 1983. The success rate of the programs in their first six years was 15-25%. Following the introduction of specificity training into the program in 1989, the success rate of the two programs increased to an average of 90%. Collectively, as of 1992, the department's pre-training programs had put more than 50 women onto the department. Engineering, March 1991. for more information.] --23 -- They allow candidates tomeasure their current fitness levels against what the firedepartment will require of them, and to identify any areas of weakness; They provide instruction for candidates in the techniques that can most effectively be used to accomplish the test items; They give candidates experience in handling the equipment used on the test; and They give the fire department an opportunity to identify any problems or inconsistencies in the design and administration of the test. Some fire departments offer both their physical test and practice sessions on a regular basis: for example, practice sessions monthly and the test twice a year. Most departments, however, test only every one or two years, and hold practice sessions during the weeks or months in advance of the test. In either case, the practice sessions should be held far enough in advance that a candidate can go through a practice to find out her/ his areas of difficulty, and still have time afterwards to work on those areas before the test is actually given. In setting up practice sessions, consider the following. The equipment, tasks, and sequence of events should be the same as on the actual test, or as close as possible. The convenience of setting up just part of the test for each session may be tempting, but if your test consists of a timed sequence of tasks, participants will not be able to get a realistic idea of the endurance needed to complete the test in the allotted time if they can not run through all of its events. Obtain release forms from all participants prior to any hands-on practice or training. You may also require that certain types of clothing or footwear be worn, or you may wish to provide helmets, gloves or other protective items for candidates to wear during practice. If you are providing the equipment, make a full range of sizes available to ensure a safe fit for all participants. Firefighters and officers who will serve as staff for the practice sessions should be carefully selected and trained. They should be supportive and encouraging of all candidates, and should offer instruction in all techniques that will be acceptable in actual performance of the test. If candidates attempt to use techniques or methods that are clearly unsafe, the staff should inform them that their method is not acceptable. It is very important to have consistency between the personnel giving instruction at the practice sessions and those who will administer the test, so that candidates are given reliable information. Schedule the sessions for different times of day and different days of the week, to increase the number of candidates who can attend. If the testing equipment is relatively portable and easy to set up, consider holding practice sessions at several locations, for the same reason. Physical test preparation: other resources Drawing on the resources of a local university, some departments have had an exercise scientist create a task-specific training program for women that is designed around the evolutions on the physical test and the physical requirements of the job and the training academy. (If assessing these three items -the test, the training, and the job -produces three different sets of physical requirements, it may be an indication that re-evaluating your testing and training procedures is in order.) Make sure the program is written down in a way that can easily be understood by someone who is not familiar with weight- training terminology or notation. Seek community support to supplement what your department can do. Gyms and fitness clubs may be willing to offer membership discounts to candidates who are preparing to take the firefighter exam; make sure the staff members of these gyms receive copies of your training program. Donations from businesses or small grants from community funds may be available to sponsor gym memberships or tuition for a weight-training course at a community college. Even if a fire department can not, or chooses not to, seek financial support for such efforts, it can do some basic organizational work that will make it more likely that women will maintain their motivation and develop their fitness levels. The department can offer physical conditioning classes itself, or it can provide a sign-up list that will help women candidates find partners to work out with who are motivated by the same goal of becoming a firefighter. Other forms of preparation Many fire departments, union locals, and support groups offer or make available "study skills" and test-taking workshops that help candidates prepare for written entry-level tests and for the fire academy. These classes or sessions focus on reading retention, problem-solving, and other skills and tips that assist candidates in the testing process. Local community colleges often have useful resource people in these areas: you may be able to borrow a faculty member to conduct workshops, or find ways to fund candidates' tuition in a study-skills course. This can be of great benefit to women who are re-entering the job market and to those with limited academic backgrounds, particularly if the written test is especially competitive. Workshops on interview skills can also be helpful in preparing candidates for that portion of the hiring process. Once the testing procedure is over and you have identified the candidates who will enter the next academy, it may be useful to hold a final orientation session, presented by women already on the job to the women --24-- A firefighting "pre-academy" Captain Jim DeLacey was assigned to run the Oakland (California) Fire Department's pre-academy recruit program in 1991. Although the program had been in operation for several years it was relatively insubstantial at the time. In redesigning it, DeLacey looked also at the department's training academy, where he identified a problem. The firefighters who had come out of the last few recruit classes were good enough firefighters, but they weren't exhibiting the fitness or endurance levels that DeLacey, a former swimming coach, thought they should. Drawing on his background in kinesiology, he developed a program that would promote physical fitness in both the academy and the pre-academy. The pre-academy is open to women who have passed all of the entry-level firefighter tests and are waiting to be hired. Its goal is to enhance their ability to complete recruit school successfully. Attendance at the sessions is not mandatory, but each student is asked to commit on a weekly basis to the number of sessions they will attend the following week. The 1991 pre-academy was run on weekday evenings for two hours a night, five nights a week, for six weeks; an average of four to seven women attended each session. The basic fitness program consisted of circuit training, free weights, and running. At the end of the first week, candidates' strength in several muscle groups was assessed by way of maximum repetitions of bench presses, curls, pull-ups, etc. These assessments were repeated at two-week intervals. DeLacey found strength improvements greatest in the middle part of the course: approximately 20% after the second two weeks, and around 25% overall. The greatest improvement was in candidates' running and aerobic capacity: by the end of the pre-academy, participants were running up to 5-l/ 2 miles three times a week. The pre-academy also included some basic fireground work. During the first two weeks, participants carried hose packs around the drill ground, learned to raise and extend a 35-foot wooden ladder, developed simulated chopping skills (focusing on body mechanics to produce an effective result) using an eight-pound sledge hammer, hoisted and lowered rolls of l-1/ 2" and 3" hose via rope to a third-floor window, and learned safe and effective techniques for lifting large, bulky objects. After two to three weeks, more fireground tasks were added, particularly carrying, "throwing' and raising ground ladders. During this pre- academy, DeLacey found that many of the women were having a problem with the one-person throw of a twenty-foot ladder. His own technique suggestions did not solve the problem. The woman firefighter who was assisting him with the course, who was also a bodybuilder, was able to demonstrate a technique that the women could use effectively. Morale was high in the pre-academy, which kept the women committed and developed strong ties among the group members. DeLacey's assistant kept in touch with those candidates who were not attending sessions, to maintain contact with them on a regular basis while they were waiting for the regular academy to begin. The entire cost of the pre-academy program to the Oakland Fire Department was one captain's and one firefighter's overtime for the evening hours for six weeks. A multi-station weight machine has now been purchased that will be used in future programs; this particular pre-academy used only the dumbbells and free weights that were available at the time. DeLacey feels that programs of this type should be run by women if at all possible, and that women firefighters or officers must be involved in some capacity. The trainees who participated in the program, however, said that the complementarity of the captain's and firefighter's personalities, and the difference in their approaches to fitness, were very valuable. Other suggested improvements included having access to first-due equipment so participants can practice on items actually used in the field, instead of older equipment scrounged up from storage. Being able to practice pulling starter cords on generators and saws, for example, would have been helpful. The women suggested that offering sessions at different times of day, and providing access to child care, might have made the pre-academy a possibility for more of the women on the list. The women who completed the 1991 pre-academy were among nine women who entered the Oakland Fire Department's 16-week recruit training program later that year, all of whom graduated on April 3, 1992, bringing the total number of women in the department to 34, or seven percent of the department's line personnel. [Thanks to Captain DeLacey and other members of the Oakland Fire Department, particularly its academy personnel, for making this informution available.] --25 -- who are about to enter training. If your program has been effective up to this point, much of the material may be redundant, but this session will provide one more opportunity to let the new candidates know "what the job is going to be about." It should include information on the role of the recruit, the paramilitary structure of the organization, the function of the chain of command, and the importance of teamwork. It should also be a time when the women can speak freely with each other about the realities and stresses of the job, share solutions and coping skills, and in general offer an introduction to firehouse life. As most fire departments do not employ large numbers of women, new woman recruits are not likely to work with other women once they are assigned to a station. Anorientation such as this, beyond providing last-minute information and survival tips, can help create a support network that will compensate for the lack of female role models in the station. Another means of providing direct support between incumbent personnel and firefighter candidates or recruits is a mentoring program. Individual firefighters or officers, through the department or the union, may volunteer to serve as mentors to candidates, trainees, or probationary firefighters. Mentors offer support, a point of contact within the department, technique tips, and additional needed information. A list of names should be offered to the candidates or recruits so that they can choose the firefighter they personally are most comfortable contacting. At the conclusion of any recruitment effort, you should evaluate theeffectiveness of the program. Theapplicants themselvescan provide direct and constructive feedback. A space on the application form asking how the person heard about the job, and an evaluation form that attendees at orientation sessions or viewers of videotapes will fill out, can help you determine where your efforts can be improved. Save the data base you have developed on potential candidates and use it as part of your mailing list for the next recruiting drive. If your eligibility list is likely to last for some time, implement a mechanism that lets you maintain contact with women who are on the list but haven't yet been hired. This lets them know they haven't been forgotten, and increases the chances that they stay interested in the job. Each member of the recruitment team, and other individuals who have had a significant part in the effort, should submit a written report; this should be followed by a meeting of all who were involved. A final report with recommendations for change and an action plan for implementation of the changes should result and be forwarded to the fire chief or appropriate member of top management. Follow-up letters of thanks from the recruitment coordinator or fire chief to all community members who donated services or money to the recruitment effort are not only polite but may make future donations more likely. --26 -- When Judith Livers applied to become a firefighter in 1974, the Arlington (Virginia) Fire Department required her to pass a physical test even though they had never before tested applicants on their physical fitness for the job. Nationwide, as more women began to enter career firefighting positions, the fire service turned its attention to the physical demands of the job and the measures used to test candidates' fitness. As a group, women were often considered incapable of performing the physical tasks of firefighting. For example, a survey of California fire chiefs in 1976 showed that 61% believed women were not physically capable of being firefighters. (Thirty-one percent also said they would not hire a woman even if she were physically and mentally able to do the job.) ' The possibility of being faced with incompetent women applicants led many departments to toughen their entry-level standards or to develop physical tests for the first time. Up until a series of court challenges beginning in the late 1970's, such tests were often haphazardly designed and administered by untrained individuals who had no expertise in testing. The issue of firefighter physical testing is a complex, thorny and often controversial one that raises questions that have no simple answers. There is no perfect solution, no one "best" physical test for firefighter applicants. Within the limitations of fire department budgets, it is very likely that no physical test could predict job performance with pinpoint accuracy. As a further complication, the validity of any test from one jurisdiction to the next is not guaranteed, since each employer using a test that has an unequal impact on a particular applicant group must validate that test. (The EEOC's Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures do permit a validated test from one jurisdiction to be considered valid elsewhere, but only if the user conducts a transportability study demonstrating that the major work behaviors are fundamentally similar for the job in the two jurisdictions.) 2 It is important to note that "validity" has a specific legal definition in this context, and does not simply refer to a general sense that the test is related to the job or contains elements that look like things firefighters do. Designing and validating entry-level tests is the job of exercise physiologists and other experts. The purpose of this section of the manual is to help clarify some of the legal, practical, and ethical issues affecting physical test design and administration, and to provide guidance to fire service managers in assessing the value and impact of an entry-level physical test. The federal law that regulates employment tests, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,3 is defined in the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)." This law, and later court decisions interpreting it, provides that an employment selection device such as a physical test can be challenged if it has an "adverse" or "disparate" impact on a protected group: in other words, if the test disqualifies women or racial minorities in disproportionate numbers.* According to the EEOC Guidelines, a selection rate for a protected group that is less than 80% of the rate for the group with the highest rate will generally be regarded as evidence of a test's disparate impact. For example, if 200 men and 80 women take a test, and 150 men and 40 women pass it, then the pass rate for women (50%) is only 67% of that for men (75%) and could indicate disparate impact. *Criteria for protection under Title VII include race. color, religion, sex and national origin. People with disabilities are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The issue of firefighter physical testing is a complex, thorny and often controversial one that raises questions that have no simple answers. --27 -- Although "adverse" and "disparate" impact are not explicitly defined in Title VII or any subsequent legislation, the Supreme Court in 1989 tightened the statistical standards for disparate-impact cases. 5 The plaintiffs in the case had argued that disparate impact should be determined by comparing the total number of minorities in the geographical labor market with the number in skilled jobs at the employer's cannery. The Court decided that the proper comparison was between the racial composition of qualified persons in the labor market and the persons holding the jobs at issue. In a job such as firefighting, where the entry-level educational requirements are relatively low, "qualified" might include everyone with a high-school education. On the other hand, it could be more narrowly defined by a court's ideas about what proportion of women in the population would be physically capable of doing the job. This determination could significantly affect the opinion of the EEOC or a court about how acceptable the percentage of women passing an entry-level test is. If those challenging a test can show that it has a disparate impact, it then becomes the employer's responsibility to conduct a study that will validate the test. This means that the employer must show that the test accurately predicts which applicants will perform the job better. 6 The person or group challenging the test may also show that other tests which would also serve the employer's hiring interests would have less of an adverse impact on the protected group. There are three types of validity, or ways of showing that a test is legal: criterion, content, and construct. Criterion validity is proven when the test accurately predictsor is significantly correlated with the actual work proficiency of employees. Content validity is proven when the content of the test duplicates or is representative of actual job duties. Construct validity identifies the mental and psychological traits required for successful job performance. 7 In defending challenges to entry-level physical tests, fire departments rely on criterion and content validity. Construct validity has been regarded as inapplicable by definition to job duties requiring physical abilities. Validity studies are usually conducted by industrial psychologists or other experts in the field. The actual validation of a test, based on the study, is done in court or by a fact-finder. Types of tests Approaches to entry-level physical screening by fire departments fall into four general categories. These are: Proxy tests Job-simulation tests General fitness assessments No entry-level physical test Some fire departments' tests combine elements of the first three types of screening. All four options have advantages and disadvantages in terms of their effectiveness and their impact on women candidates. These will be discussed below. Proxy tests. Many early challenges to physical testing involved tests that used supposedly "pure" measurements that were alleged to have criterion validity. Tests of this type rely on distance runs to measure stamina, devices to measure grip strength, balance beams to measure equilibrium, eight-foot walls to measure the ability to scale obstacles, etc. The advantages to proxy tests are that they minimize "trainable" tasks (tasks that require practice in order to gain expertise) and tend to give less of an advantage to candidates who have prior experience working with firefighting equipment. When these "substitute" or "proxy" tests have been challenged, however, fire departments often have not been able to show that the tasks actually measure what they are intended to measure, or have not been able to justify the scoring systems used to evaluate the tasks. For instance, some tests used a dynamometer to measure grip strength. Because the device did not adjust for hand size, it did not accurately measure the grip strength of applicants with smaller hands. When the scoring system for a distance run was examined, in some cases employers could not explain how they determined what would be an acceptable passing score except by caprice or guess." As a result, these tests designed to measure abilities required by the job have been viewed with skepticism by many fact- finders and courts.* Job simulation tests. Many fire departments use tests that require candidates to perform simulated fireground tasks such as carrying tools and equipment, chopping, simulated forcible entry or pulling ceilings, or advancing hose lines while wearing protective gear. Defending these job simulation tests as having content validity, employers have argued that the test evolutions closely replicate the tasks firefighters actually perform on the job. Fire departments have found the public, unions, courts, and even candidates themselves less willing to dispute a test that, on its surface, resembles what people generally believe firefighters are required to do. Job simulation tests, like proxy tests, also have their shortcomings. They often include skills that a trained person will perform better than an untrained one, or tasks that require practice in order to gain expertise. This makes an objective assessment of the candidate's raw ability almost impossible. (The EEOCGuidelines caution against the use of trainable items on entry-level selection devices.)" ' These tests also often use scoring systems that require the candidate to perform the test at an "all-out" pace rather than a pace actually used on the fireground. Such scoring systems identify the fastest candidate, but *The Americans with Disabilities Act. however, provides for simulated (or actual) task demonstration in order to establish ability within the context of that Act." --28 -- Public relations and changing the entry-level test Most fire departments review their entry-level test periodically to make it more job-related, safer for the candidates, and/ or less expensive to administer. If you change your test design around the same time that you announce your intent to recruit women firefighters, your current firefighters and the public may become suspicious of the most recent changes in the test. They may decide that the test is being "watered down" to "let" women on the department. Ironically, this is especially likely when a lawsuit or other challenge has pointed out the deficiencies of the old test. Clear communication within the department is the first step in dealing with this problem. If your workforce is educated about the changes and accepting of them, the public will usually follow. An aggressive, positive publicity campaign in the media can also help prevent the recruitment and testing process from being poisoned by rumor and misconception. In departments that are unionized, a media campaign will be most effective if it is a joint effort between fire department management and the firefighters' union. Unless the situation has already become highly polarized, a joint task force or other coalition should make a cooperative effort possible. The public in general has little knowledge of the actual physical demands of firefighting. Fed by media images, people often believe that the harder the testing process is, the better for everyone. Letters to the editor about fire department physical tests usually reflect little awareness of the necessity for valid, job-relevant tests, and represent a genera1 perception that We don't want a 'fair' test; we want the best firefighters." Some examples: The fire department's efforts to keep its standards high should be applauded by all, not belittled... by someone who had to file a lawsuit to get standards lowered to get a job. Only the most able-bodied should be allowed to become firefighters. (It used to be) that if one could not pass the test, one had to seek less strenuous employment. In educating your community about entry-level tests, consider the following approaches: -Point out that the test has changed almost every time it's been given (if this is the case). -Emphasize any aspects of the new test that measure abilities that the old one didn't, such as aerobic or flexibility components. Offer statistics about firefighter injuries and heart ailments to document the need for such testing. Stress that the new test is therefore not necessarily easier; in fact, it is more comprehensive than the old one. -Explain the reasons for removing any specific items from the test: for example, the event was removed because it's not done on the job, or not done by one person, or the ability to perform that task is better tested by a new item. -Note that there are several thousand women working successfully as firefighters and officers on departments of all sizes throughout the U. S. and Canada. -Emphasize management's commitment to hiring qualified, competent firefighters, and to giving a test that doesn't exclude anyone who can do the job. Avoid saying that you're only complying with federal law in revising your test: you risk sounding like you wouldn't make the changes if you didn't have to. this determination is meaningless in the absence of data to demonstrate that faster candidates actually make better firefighters. (Scoring systems are discussed later.) Lastly, the events on a job-simulation test may not actually measure what they are intended to measure. General fitness assessments. Some fire departments, instead of testing for the ability to perform simulated job tasks or proxy events, have adopted tests that assess the overall physical fitness of the individual applicant. The philosophy behind this type of test was expressed by one manager as, "We think our firefighters should have a level of fitness that falls in the top forty percent of the population." (The 40% figure was set by that particular department.) The assessment may include such events as a single-repetition bench press with a maximum weight, a sit-and-reach flexibility check, push-ups, sit-ups, and dumbbell curls. Scoring for some events may be scaled to the candidate's age, body weight, and gender, to correlate with general fitness standards for each group. This would mean that a 23-year-old male candidate weighing 210 pounds might be required to bench press 140 pounds, while a 34-year-old woman weighing 150 pounds would be required to do only 60 pounds. On the other hand, in flexibility measures, women may be required to out-perform men in order to receive a passing score. General fitness assessments are not widely used as entry-level tests; where they are, in most cases, elements from proxy or job-simulation tests are also incorporated into the testing process. The primary advantages to this --29-- type of test are that it provides a comprehensive view of the candidate's overall physical fitness, and that it does not rely on trainable tasks for its measurements. These tests often will not have a disparate impact on women. Where this is the case, Title VII does not require the employer to demonstrate the test's validity or relevance to the job. (A test must be demonstrably job- related, however, if it tends to screen out individuals or groups protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act 11 or other civil rights statutes.) Criticisms of general fitness assessments as entry-level tests usually focus on the scaling of pass/ fail points to the candidate's age, gender, and weight. While this may be the accurate way to determine how a candidate's fitness level compares to that of others in his/ her category, it runs counter to the "performance" approach that measures the candidate by the demands of the job. Demonstrating the criterion validity of such a test, should that become necessary, would appear to be difficult. Even if the scores are not scaled, general fitness assessments are still subject to the same criticisms as proxy tests in terms of the difficulty of linking pass/ fail points to actual job demands. No entry-level physical test. Some smaller fire departments have never used physical performance tests as part of their entry-level process, relying instead on training and the probationary period to weed out those who can not perform the job. At least one large department in the early 1990's abandoned its entry- level physical test in favor of the screening provided by the training process. Having no physical component (other than a medical examination) to a firefighter hiring process seems a radical notion. After all, the job requires a certain amount of strength and fitness, even if the exact levels of each are difficult to determine. The idea, however, has its advantages. It does not disqualify applicants on the basis of a test that may or may not be valid. It permits recruits to be trained before their abilities and performance are assessed. And it eliminates much of the expense involved in test development and validation. It also offers several disadvantages. It runs the risk of putting candidates into firefighter training who do not have the basic fitnessnecessary to go through the training program. This places a burden on the training staff, and is unfair to the candidate who may have quit another job in the sincere belief that s/ he had a good chance to become a firefighter. Moving to a "no-test" option may also generate controversy and disharmony within the department. Having no entry-level physical test does not allow a fire department to escape the responsibility of sorting out qualified from unqualified job applicants. The responsibility is simply merged into the training process, This may only create new problems. It makes the importance of excellent training and highly qualified instructors all the greater. It also increases the need for a stringent medical physical (within the limits of Americans with Disabilities Act), particularly one that assesses the cardiovascular system and the potential for back injury. An option that can make this approach more workable is to offer candidates a voluntary fitness or physical performance assessment, informing them of the level of performance they will have to reach by the end of training. One major fire department has adopted a system that modifies this approach. It uses a job-simulation test with a time limit for job applicants that is several minutes longer than the department's performance standard. By the end of recruit training, and annually for the rest of their careers, firefightersmust perform up to the standard. In developing an entry-level physical test, being able to demonstrate its criterion or content validity is only part of the goal. Simply complying with federal law, even if it were always clearly defined, would not necessarily produce a fair or usable test. The EEOC Guidelines, and the industrial- psychologist testing methodology on which they are based, offer a narrow view of discrimination that can not eliminate all the harms caused by past inequities in employment practices. Why do the Guidelines fail toeliminate bias in testing? After all, they require test development to involve a scientific element, so that a test can not be based on people's subjective opinions about what the job requires. This is a good concept, but what often happens in actual practice is that the "scientific" approach gets distorted or is inadequate. This can happen in many ways. Failures of the survey process. In order to determine your department's entry- level physical performance standard for firefighters, you must assess what it is that firefighters actually do and how they do it. This is called a job task analysis. It should provide a picture of the job of firefighter, and since job tasks are not always obvious, the analysis must break duties down into their simplest components.* The analysis has an objective component consisting of a list of tasks and how often they are performed, as well as a subjective view of how critical each task is. The test developer gathers information about the job from people on the job ("incumbents"). The more accurate this information is, the better the job analysis will be. *The job analysis provides the basis for the validation study. The analysis must be "a thorough survey of the relative importance of the various skills involved in the job in question and the degree of competency required in regard to each skill. It is conducted by interviewing workers, supervisors and administrators; consulting training manuals; and closely observing... actual performance." 12 --30 -- However, the surveys used to determine the critical skills required by the job may not work the way they were designed to. People already on the job, and the evaluators themselves, bring their own biases to the evaluation process; the surveys generally are not designed to eliminate the inaccuracies that these biases produce. It is natural for a dominant, incumbent group to rate the traits they themselves hold in relative abundance as critical to the job, and to underrate the importance of traits they do not possess. Similarly, surveys written by evaluators who have preconceptions about the job will often reflect those preconceptions, in subtle or obvious ways, affecting the resulting data. What should be scientific neutrality ends up being exactly the kind of intuition and traditional belief that the Guidelines intended to avoid, because the values are being determined by the dominant group and not established impartially. 13 Inaccurate determination of a test's value in predicting job performance. Sex discrimination on the job can make an entry-level test that discriminates against women nonetheless appear to have criterion validity. If women score lower than men on a screening test and then suffer on the job from sexual harassment, denial of training opportunities, and other behavior that diminishes their productivity or has a negative impact on their performance evaluations, a validation study will seem to show that poor performance by women on the entry- level test "predicted" their poor performance on the job.* Unequal treatment can thus perpetuate itself and become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as well as giving men an advantage on the entry-level test. Confusing common abilities with needed ones. The fact that incumbents pass or do well on an entry-level test does not necessarily mean that the test measures abilities the job requires. A test that measures common traits (ones that many people on the job hold) instead of needed skills (ones that the job demands) may appear on its surface to be valid. For example, if an old, flawed selection device had selected a psychotic workforce, a profile of incumbents could be used to validate a new selection device that would result in the selection of future generations of psychotic firefighters. Fire department tests may be testing for irrelevant traits: traits possessed by the majority of firefighters because the firefighters happen to be male, not because the traits are critical to task performance . The challenge of impartiality Finding an impartial evaluator in a society permeated by sexism is a problem that must be recognized by anyone trying to develop a gender-neutral exam. Studies show that, on the whole, not only does traditional "women's work" not command comparable rewards to men's, but when men and women perform identical tasks, the tasks performed by women are rated lower. Students give less favorable evaluations to identical work when told the work is done by a woman. Nor does the fact that the evaluator is a woman or member of a minority group eliminate the ingrained bias against women's contributions and abilities. In order to "get along" in the workplace, members of minority groups often, consciously or unconsciously, adopt the workplace ethos of the majority group. Institutionalizing traditional values. It is even possible that when we think we are testing for desirable traits, we are actually selecting for harmful ones. At least one fire service manager has openly questioned whether there might in fact be a direct correlation between high scores on the entry-level test and later incidence of job-related injuries. 15 A fresh look at traditionally valued behaviors and abilities will produce hiring processes that not only are fairer to applicants but healthier for the fire service as a whole. This applies to attitudes as well as behavior. One model program for firefighter stress management has suggested that: Basic fire service attitudes, beliefs and values that are largely masculine and are believed to promote stress, such as omnipotence, a rigid frontier mentality based on strength and toughness, insensitivity, callousness, and extreme risk- taking, may change in a more positive direction with the introduction of women into the fire service. 16 The ideal in screening firefighter applicants for their physical suitability for the job would be a test that would separate those who, with training, could become skilled and competent firefighters from those who could not. The test would measure each applicant against a standard in an objective way, would not give unfair or irrelevant advantages to anyone, and would not disadvantage anyone for reasons unrelated to job performance. It *In 1988. the Center for Social Policy and Practice in the Workplace at Columbia University issued a report on gender integration in the New York City Fire Department. Columbia used a job survey to ameasure attitudes of male firefighters and officers towards women firefighters. (All of the women fire fighters had been on the department for five years at the time of the survey.) Men of all levels and experience, regardless of assignment rated FDNY women firefighters as less competent than brand-new male recruits on every firefighting task except skill in community relations. For tasks requiring strength -carrying hose to the fifth floor, making a rescue -men saw the gap in "ability" between new recruits and women as being even wider in favor of new (male) recruits. Further, women's interpersonal relations were rated as significantly less competent than new recruits if the ability to take hazing and pranks was the criterion. Columbia took some small solace in the fact that men who had actually worked with women firefighters rated them slightly higher across all criteria than did men who had not worked with women. 14 --31-- Test administration The best-designed test will not accomplish its intended purpose if it is poorly administered. Your test should be established in full detail before the application period is announced. Your recruitment literature should offer a complete description of what will be on the test, how it will be scored, and how the final eligibility list will be established. Some departments have resisted giving out information about scoring systems, cut-off times, or even about the composition of the test itself; this has a disparate impact on those who may require more preparation time (primarily women). The willingness to spend time and effort preparing for a test is a strong indicator of commitment: the applicant didn't just wander in off the street and decide to be a firefighter. The fact that an applicant prepared for the test should be viewed positively, not as a strike against him/ her. Many fire departments have improved on the practice of requiring candidates to wear firefighting gear during the entry-level test. If candidates wear protective gear, it must be available in sizes that will fit everyone. Applicants who are otherwise qualified may be eliminated by having to use gloves that are two sizes too large, or a poorly fitting SCBA that shifts and throws them off balance; these factors primarily affect women. A better option is to use a weighted vest that simulates the weight of the protective gear and SCBA. These are adjustable to a wide range of sizes and do not give an advantage to one group over another, as the use of firefighting gear can easily do. Carefully assess the equipment being used on the test events to be sure that it functions as well as equipment used in the field. For example, one fire department's test included a ladder extension. The halyard of the rope on the test's ladder was a smaller diameter than that on ladders used in the field, making it much more difficult to grip effectively. You may choose to make a task less difficult than in the field, compensating for the fact that the recruit will receive training and practice that will improve his/ her abilities, but it is hard to justify a task on the test being more difficult than it would actually be on the job. As discussed in the section on recruitment and pre-training, all techniques that will be permitted on the test should be demonstrated. These should be the same as those that have been taught at any test practice sessions. For the sake of consistency, there should be an overlap of administrative and safety personnel between the practice sessions and the test itself. would also be economical and relatively easy to administer. Even if no test can precisely meet this ideal, test developers should approach it as closely as possible. Fire administrators should look critically at their department's physical test to see if it truly measures what it is supposed to measure, in the fairest way possible. Three areas where tests often fall short are: Comprehensiveness; Whether the test contains trainable elements; and Whether the test reflects actual fireground practice Comprehensiveness A comprehensive test assesses the entire range of physical abilities needed on the job. Many entry-level firefighter tests primarily assess speed (anaerobic capacity) and upper-body strength. [See Appendix 2 for one example.] Yet a firefighter's job requires other equally important attributes. Heart attacks consistently cause nearly 50% of firefighter line-of-duty deaths, yet many fire departments have no endurance component to their entry-level tests. 17 Muscular strains and sprains are by far the leading type of injury for fire suppression personnel, on and off the fireground, yet flexibility is often given minimal consideration or is not tested at all. 18 The same is true of attributes such as balance, and small motor movements. If, as often happens, women compare favorably with men on the criteria that are not tested, and candidates are only tested on those areas where women tend to perform less well than men, the results will inaccurately show women to be less qualified for the job than a more comprehensive test would indicate. Comprehensive entry-level testing is not only fairer to the candidates; it is a benefit to the fire department. The fire service should take advantage of ongoing advances in medicine and exercise physiology in order to improve and refine its ability to evaluate specific physical qualities. Choosing the wrong people at entry level, such as those prone to heart attacks or disabling back injuries, does a disservice to the worker and to the community served. Trainable elements Trainable elements on the test should be minimized. Using trainable tasks in entry-level tests is specifically discouraged by the EEOC Guidelines. If entry- level firefighters will all receive basic firefighter training before going on the line, make sure your test does not inadvertently give preference to candidates who have prior experience. (You may choose to favor those with experience by giving extra points through the interview process or elsewhere, but that should not be the function of the physical test.) The tasks selected should be those that require the least training or knowledge of test equipment to perform. --32-- Consider an example of what can happen if an entry-level test contains a significant number of trainable elements. Taking this hypothetical test for a career-level fire department are two candidates. Candidate X has been a volunteer firefighter for two years, so s/ he knows some basic firefighting skills: how to handle an axe, raise a ladder, drag hose, open a hydrant, etc. Candidate Y has no firefighting background but has more of the basic qualities the fire department needs in its entry-level candidates: cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, eye-hand coordination, etc. Because of his/ her volunteer experience, Candidate X may outscore Candidate Y on the test and be the one who is hired. What happened, and why? The candidate who, in our example, was the less qualified of the two, got the job. It happened because a test that should have been predicting job performance instead measured prior exposure to job skills. If fire departments threw recruit firefighters into the field without any training, one could possibly justify such a test. But a real-world fire department that hired both of these candidates would find that, once trained, Y was the better firefighter. S/ he was better qualified in terms of basic attributes, while X has already had the benefit of some firefighter training and so will not improve as much during training. The concept of trainability is not limited to fireground evolutions, but may refer to aspects of cultural pre-training for which physical tests implicitly reward candidates. Job-simulation tests that use firefighting tools and gear give an advantage to men as a group, because men are more likely than women to have worked with axes, ladders, or heavy/ bulky objects (ventilation fans, dummies) before, and may be more familiar with performing tasks in bulky gear or gloves. Holding testpractice sessions (see "Recruitment" section) can somewhat reduce the impact of trainable elements on a test, but it is even more effective to eliminate these elements wherever possible. Reflection of actual fireground practice Once trainable elements are minimized, an entry-level test should reflect the way the job is actually performed. This includes pace, time limits, technique, and the selection and sequence of tasks. A test that requires successful candidates to perform at an all-out pace does not represent the way the job is actually done. While many fire departments are careful to set realistic time limits for their tests and to specify that a walking pace be maintained throughout, others use tests that, by design or unintentionally, require an all- out, anaerobic pace.* (If even a brief rest period breaks ups a "long" test designed to measure aerobic capacity, stamina and endurance, it may instead become two or more anaerobic/ speed tests.) Although actual fireground performance calls upon the firefighter's aerobic capacity, these tests require speed-to-completion performance and therefore measure only anaerobic capacity. Their pace and intensity do not match the way firefighter tasks are really performed. Women as a group tend to compare favorably with men on aerobic capacity, but may be disadvantaged by tests that over-emphasize anaerobic ability. Sequential tests that lump all tasks together under an overall time limit do not measure minimal ability in any single task. A candidate could perform one task at a speed that would be unacceptably slow on the job, but still pass the test by completing other tasks at sp