Women make up only about 4 percent of the nation's firefighters, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor. And local female firefighters face the same kind of underrepresentation in this area.
These gender disparities were the focus of the Vintage Fire Museum's "Women in the Fire Service" talk, which included guest speaker Maria Bucur, professor of Gender Studies at Indiana University, and a panel of four local female firefighters, to discuss the obstacles facing women in the profession. The program, along with the Jeffersonville museum's exhibit on the history of women firefighters, was supported by a grant from Indiana Humanities.
Bucur said while she has studied women's history for three decades, it is often difficult to find information on female firefighters — and there "is a reason for that," she said.