The case in summary The fire and rescue service has long been underrepresented by women. The new professional education in fire, rescue and community safety was supposed to contribute to greater diversity, but no women entered. The men at the new vocational school have received more additional points for professional certificates, which may have contributed to their having collected more points than the women. Women make up only 6 percent of all employees in the fire and rescue service. There are no national guidelines for physical admission requirements in the fire service, and the requirements vary from district to district. Willingness, attention and clarity are needed to increase the proportion of women in the fire and rescue service. The summary is made by an AI service from OpenAI. The content is quality assured by news’s journalists before publication. “Take a look at this group: they are indeed historic!” wrote Rogaland fire and rescue under a picture on Facebook. The 20 men in the picture had been given a place on the vocational school course which was supposed to contribute to more diversity between the sexes in the fire service. – It was a rather unfortunate picture of what we want, says Lill-Marit Overvik. Lill-Marit Overvik went from a job in psychiatry to the fire and rescue service in 2010. Since then, she has been involved in getting more women into the fire and rescue service. Photo: Trøndelag fire and rescue service Ho is education master at Trøndelag fire and rescue service. Before that, he worked for 13 years in emergency services. In addition, she is a leader in a network for women in fire and rescue and has previously spoken out about the prejudices women face in the fire profession. The fire, rescue and community safety vocational school is completely new, and the students recently had their first day. But what happened to all the women? Campaigns to increase the proportion of women in male occupations have been astonishingly unsuccessful, writes Gudrun Njå in this chronicle. The men get more additional points – We should of course have seen a greater diversity in the first recording, says Ann Christin Rognmo Olsen in the Directorate for Community Safety and Emergency Preparedness. Ann Christin Rognmo Olsen is section manager at DSB. Photo: Mads Thygesen / news She is section leader for prevention and education in the department for fire and rescue. For years, news has written about the low proportion of women in the fire and rescue service. Different voices point to the challenges and solutions. Indicated that the police get it done, but not fire and rescue. – We believe the new vocational school is an important measure to get more people with a different background into the fire and rescue service, says Olsen and points out that when the new school is in place in Tjeldsund, they will admit 80 students each semester. If the first litter had been 80 this time, eight of these would have been women. Because out of 680 applicants, there were 106 women. – Are you satisfied with 8 out of 80? – I think we will go even higher in the future, but this is a long-term effort, she says. At the new vocational school, applicants have received additional points for vocational certificates. This may have contributed to the fact that the men scored more points than the women, according to DSB. Removed requirements – had no effect The latest figures from DSB show that women make up 6 per cent of all employees in the fire and rescue service. In 2017, the percentage was four. The tough physical entry requirements are often cited as the reason why women are underrepresented in the fire service. There are no national guidelines for what these should contain, and they vary from fire district to fire district. But Overvik does not think that the collar is the main problem. – Is the problem too few female applicants? – I think it might be a mix of both. But perhaps mostly that too few women apply, she says. But getting the women’s section up is important. It takes a long time to change – the fire and rescue service must reflect the population. Several types of backgrounds, educations and types of people mean that one solves tasks in a better way. It will also be a good climate for us who work here, she says. But in order to bring about change, will, attention and clarification are needed, Overvik believes. In March, diversity in the fire and rescue service is the theme of the DSB’s fire protection conference. In addition, a parliamentary report on the fire and rescue service is expected. In the report submitted to the politicians in June last year, the low degree of diversity was highlighted as an important issue. – Then we have to remember that we have to start somewhere. If you want to change something that has been fairly stable over many, many years, it takes some time, says Overvik. Hello! Welcome to dialogue at news. Since you are logged in to other news services, you do not have to log in again here, but we need your consent to our terms of use for online dialogue
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No women on new vocational training – news Rogaland – Local news, TV and radio
