NFPA Journal - Spring 2023 - 43

SURVEY SAYS
" My jacket has no cut for
my hips, and I have to hike
it up to get to anything in
my pockets. The sleeves are
too long. It's an off-the-shelf
men's cut. The crotch on
the pants is halfway down
my thighs. I feel like I'm
wearing a diaper. "
-WILDLAND FIREFIGHTER
measurements, but at the holistic person-it's not a
data point we're outfitting, it's a person, right? " she
said. " And that's feedback that we hope the standards
committees can find beneficial. Right out of
the gate, with the most simplistic initial analysis,
we have already found a large discrepancy between
sizing requirements and actual data. Certainly, these
women's complaints are valid. And honestly, it's
shocking that there haven't been more complaints. "
Once their analysis is finished, the researchers say
they hope to propose a new sizing system for both
structural and wildfire PPE to share with the fire
service, manufacturers, and standards developers.
They also plan to share their anthropometric data
sets with manufacturers in the hope it will help
them design better clothing.
In the future, Kwon and McQuerry are determined
to expand their research to include other types of
PPE, including hoods, gloves, boots, and equipment
such as self-contained breathing apparatus. Interviews
in the FPRF study, as well as in other studies,
including the one published in Fashion and Textiles,
uncovered numerous complaints from women about
these items as well. Anecdotes include gloves that
are too big to grasp tools effectively, boots that are
merely smaller versions of those made for men, and
SCBA bottles that are so big that they hit female
firefighters in the back of the head as they climb
ladders and perform other tasks.
" We've only really just started, " McQuerry
said. " Ultimately, we want to address the full
PPE ensemble for women in the fire service and
make prototypes so we can get them on women
and get their feedback. We need to see what they
think because that's all that matters at the end
of the day. "
That vision for a female-specific PPE ensemble
is still very much aspirational. But for women like
Fitzgerald-McGowan, who for years struggled in
vain just to find a single pair of wildland pants
that didn't make her uncomfortable, the work being
SURVEY SAYS
" We're seeing a lot more women in
the fire service, and they just kind
of resign themselves to the fact that
their departments order male-cut
gear. They don't even know there's
an option out there. "
-PPE MANUFACTURER
done now is a huge step forward. " This is a problem
that's been discussed for a long time, and the frustration
out there among women in the profession
has been building, " she said. " When I was a wildland
firefighter, I could voice complaint, but at the end
of the day there wasn't a lot that could be done. It's
great to see that things might be changing. "
Beyond that, Avery says, serious efforts to finally
improve PPE fit for women will help erase the
hard-to-ignore signal that ill-fitting gear has sent
to generations of female firefighters: that they aren't
as important or as worth investing in as their male
counterparts. " Being involved in this project, we
have sent a clear message that people matter, and
that females belong here in the fire service, " she
said. " Women and men alike can do this job. "
JESSE ROMAN is senior editor of NFPA Journal.
NFPA .ORG/JOURNAL * NFPA JOURNAL | 43
https://www.nfpa.org/journal
NFPA Journal - Spring 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - Spring 2023
