{"id":17612,"date":"2021-10-28T12:21:56","date_gmt":"2021-10-28T16:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/textiles.ncsu.edu\/news\/?p=17612"},"modified":"2024-04-01T13:45:51","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T17:45:51","slug":"women-supporting-women-in-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/textiles.ncsu.edu\/news\/2021\/10\/women-supporting-women-in-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Women Supporting Women (In Fire)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n
By Sarah Stone<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Becoming a firefighter means exposure to life-threatening risks, from heat stress to cancer-causing particulates, burns and falling debris. It means committing to pressure-filled shifts spent putting out fires, investigating scenes and saving lives. For women, it means doing all of this dangerous and stress-inducing work using uncomfortable equipment that doesn\u2019t fit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) reports that the number of women firefighters continues to increase. According to the most recent NFPA study<\/a>, 9% of firefighters in the U.S. are women. However, the equipment vital to doing these women\u2019s jobs hasn\u2019t grown with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey\u2019re basically wearing station wear that isn\u2019t fit for their bodies. They are wearing male suits. To close the gap, some manufacturers cobbled together a female fit, but that was just essentially just shortening the length of their pants and sleeves,\u201d Research Assistant Professor Cassandra Kwon<\/a> says. \u201cFemales are inherently built differently from their male counterparts, and many of those differences in form are not accounted for in the current designs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n