City Council vows to spend more money, ramp up effort to increase diversity in agency
Blog Note: This article refers to a Santa
Clara County grand jury report
When
Catherine Capriles was hired by the Palo Alto Fire Department in 1994, she was
part of a group of 10 incoming firefighters: five men and five women.
Capriles,
who retired as deputy chief in 2018, said that during the earlier part of her
tenure, Palo Alto had a higher proportion of women than any department in the
state, going to as high as 13 women at its apex. The chief who hired her, Ruben
Grijalva, prioritized recruitment of women and minorities, she said. The class
before hers, she noted, had seven women and three men.
"He
made it a priority," Capriles told this news organization. "He fought
for and made specific decisions toward recruiting minorities and women."
Today, the Palo Alto Fire Department is
one of many across the nation that is struggling — and failing — to recruit
female firefighters. According to a recent Santa Clara County civil grand jury
report — titled "Why aren't there more female firefighters?" — Palo
Alto had 90 male firefighters and just five female firefighters in 2019. After
the retirement of a female captain last December and staffing reductions due to
budget cuts, the city now has 81 firefighters, four of whom are women, Fire
Chief Geo Blackshire said Monday during the City Council's discussion of the
report.
The
grand jury surveyed four fire agencies in the county — the Palo Alto Fire
Department, the Mountain View Fire Department, the San Jose Fire Department and
Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District — and issued a set of recommendations
to remove or reduce existing barriers for female firefighters, including the
creation of a recruiting plan tailored toward growing the number of female
firefighters. Of the agencies surveyed, only Mountain View has such a
recruiting plan — a key reason for why 10% of its department consists of female
firefighters, compared to just 2% in San Jose, 7% in Santa Clara County and 5%
in Palo Alto, according to the report.
The
report also recommends that the fire departments adopt mentoring programs to
guide potential recruits, new recruits and current firefighters. These programs
should include visits to local schools and organizations to demonstrate encouragement.
The surveyed fire agencies were also advised to create plans to address the
"unique challenges in the gender-inclusive work culture for women in the
setting of a fire department."
While
workplace diversity is broadly accepted as an inherently good quality, the
grand jury highlights the special attributes that women bring to firefighting
services. Most calls that the Fire Department receives, the report notes, are
for medical situations or transports. The jury cited numerous calls in which
the presence of a female firefighter brought a "calming effect to medical
situations."
A
Palo Alto Fire Department firefighter scales down a building with a life-size
dummy during a training exercise. Courtesy Palo Alto Fire Department.
"For
example, having a female present during childbirth labor or after a sexual
assault was seen as beneficial," the report states. "Another example
includes an instance where a naked, elderly woman fell in the shower and the
victim's relief was noticeable as her shoulders relaxed upon seeing a female
firefighter enter the room. The female firefighter entered first and covered
her up."
But
for Palo Alto and many other cities across the county, the effort to recruit
women has fallen well off the mark. The grand jury found that only 4% of the
firefighters in the county are women. It attributed the dwindling number to
insufficient female recruitment, gender bias and a "lack of
inclusivity" within the fire agencies.
"I
feel the intent was always there and there was always a lot of asking, 'What
should we do? What should we do?' But it just felt like it didn't get followed
through on," said Jennifer Krusing, who retired as a captain from the Palo
Alto Fire Department in 2019.
Like
other agencies, the department has had to contend with a shrunken pool of
female applicants. The grand jury found that only 3% of the 1,994 applicants
who applied to be firefighters in the four surveyed departments in 2016 were
women. Some of that is a function of inadequate recruiting, the jury concluded.
Krusing
agreed. She noted that when she and a colleague attended a regional girls camp
— a prime opportunity to teach high school girls about firefighting — several
years the city had declined to pay them for the time they spent there. The city
also hasn't gone as far as it could have in reaching out to students, college
athletes and other potential recruits.
"I
feel like they didn't want to do what it took to start this," Krusing
said. "You've got to start early. You've got to be more proactive."
Budget
challenges had often hampered the city's ability to recruit women, Capriles
said. The department often did not have dedicated funding for recruitment and
was forced to tap into its hiring budget. Mountain View, which Capriles said
had no women in its Fire Department in 1994, recognized this challenge and
allocated $30,000 for the recruitment of women. Palo Alto, by contrast, has not
taken that step.
"In
the past, they have made that decision," Capriles said, referring to
spending more on recruitment. "In the last 10 years, they have not made
that decision."
While
insufficient recruitment is one barrier to increasing the number of women,
harassment is another. The grand jury report notes that while every department
has a nondiscrimination policy, "the unique work setting of a fire
department coupled with the low number of women in fire service presents
out-of-the ordinary workplace challenges because they live together and rely on
each other during life-or-death situations."
"These
unique features of this workplace make it more challenging for women to report discrimination
and/or harassment," the report states.
While
Capriles said the vast majority of her colleagues were "awesome
people" and — in some cases — "friends for life," harassment was
a persistent issue for female firefighters. In most cases, she said, the person
making an inappropriate comment didn't realize that he said something sexist
until someone pointed it out to them.
The
sexism can take subtle forms. Capriles recalled an instance in which a training
instructor paused to apologize to her — the only woman in the class — before
proceeding to tell an inappropriate story. During a break, she confronted the
instructor about his behavior, which she called "embarrassing and
inappropriate," and noted that the only reason he offered an apology was
because she was in the room, and not because the story was offensive.
While
most incidents don't get reported to the Human Resources Department, when they
do, the follow-up can be underwhelming. Krusing recalled one episode when a
firefighter made an inappropriate comment around her and a colleague overheard
the comment and filed a grievance on Krusing's behalf, alleging harassment.
Over the course of the investigation, Krusing said she was asked by Human
Resources what she would like the city to do.
"It
was a really hard question because I felt like any kind of a behavior coming
from above to punish him for those things would be counterproductive," she
said. "I wanted to know they supported me but I felt like what I really,
really wanted to happen was for my peers, for the captains and their peers, to
have my back and say, 'That's not cool, that's not the way we treat
people.'"
In
responding to the grand jury, the city cited its anti-harassment policy and its
belief that "prevention is the best tool for the elimination of
harassment."
"Steps
to prevent and correct workplace harassment include affirmatively raising the
subject through training and written policy, expressing strong disapproval of
inappropriate conduct, and developing appropriate sanctions."
The
city also notes in its response that reports of unwelcome conduct are
"thoroughly investigated and, where founded, appropriate disciplinary
action up to and including termination will be taken."
At
the same time, both Krusing and Capriles said that most incidents of this sort
go unreported.
"You
have to remember, women in the fire services are in different positions than
someone who works in an office. You live with these guys, you put your life in
their hands and there are certain things you have decided to put up with,"
Capriles said, referring to casual harassment. "When you get into the fire
service, there is a decision you make to put up with that."
The
sexist comments and innuendos were a major reason that Capriles said she had
decided to retire five years earlier than initially planned.
"Sometimes
you get to a point where you say, 'Life is too short,'" Capriles said.
In
addressing the grand jury's findings, Palo Alto leaders touted on Monday the
city's progress on recent changes to support female firefighters, including
adding gender-separated locker rooms and removing a requirement that all job
applicants be licensed paramedics or EMTs — a requirement that the grand jury
highlighted as a major barrier to female applicants. Capriles credited
Blackshire, who became chief in 2019, for his attempts to bring more women in,
including changing the application requirements several years ago.
At
the same time, Blackshire and the council acknowledged Monday that it will take
additional time, effort and money for the city to raise the number of female
firefighters in the city's ranks. Recruiting girls to get interested in
firefighting is, by nature, a long-term strategy. And because the department is
currently under a hiring freeze, the revised application requirement will take
years to have any tangible effect on department demographics.
'You
have to remember, women in the fire services are in different positions than
someone who works in an office.'
Blackshire
said the department has made "tremendous efforts" to increase the
applicant pool. But he also noted that the number of women in the department is
now at its lowest level since he joined the department in 1997.
"We're
looking to make more efforts in recruitment and education and awareness and
outreach, which is really, really key," Blackshire told the council.
"I also see it as a social issue, where we have to tell women when they're
young girls … that firefighting is a career for them as well."
In its response to the grand jury, the
city notes that it has already implemented four of the five applicable
recommendations. These include developing a mentoring program, evaluating fire
stations to make sure women are accommodated, approving a plan for a
gender-inclusive workplace and issuing uniforms that are tailored for women
firefighters. The city is also moving ahead with a plan to improve recruiting
of female firefighters, though it does not expect to complete the plan by the
grand jury's deadline of this June.
When
it comes to gender-separated facilities, the city's response notes that six of
Palo Alto's seven fire stations (all but the one on Stanford University's
campus) have separated dorms, while five have separate restrooms with showers
and four have separate locker rooms.
Yet
accommodations still sometimes pose a problem for female firefighters. When the
city was building its new Station 3 near Rinconada Park and firefighters had to
temporarily relocate to a Geng Road building near the Baylands, that temporary
station did not have separate facilities. Krusing said that when female
firefighters brought up the lack of accommodations, one supervisor floated the
idea of simply not sending women to that station (Krusing said the department
did not follow through on that suggestion).
'We
have to tell women when they're young girls … that firefighting is a career for
them as well.'
The
council vowed on Monday to support Blackshire's efforts to increase the number
of women in the Fire Department and to provide him with a dedicated budget for
the effort. Council members Alison Cormack and Greer Stone both said they would
support spending more on recruiting women and touted the benefits of having
more diversity in the Fire Department. Cormack noted that firefighters often
meet people during "one of the worst days of their lives" and that
the presence of a woman can be an advantage.
Stone
said the city should follow Mountain View's example and set a goal of having at
least 10% of the Fire Department be composed of women.
"I'm
excited to see what we can come up with, as well as encouraging additional
outreach within our own local school districts, at an early level, to really
put it out there that this is a career for all genders and all people,"
Stone said.
Palos
Alto On line/Palo Alto Weekly
by Gennady Sheyner
March 17, 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment