On Monday 8 March 2021, the world celebrated International Women’s Day (IWD). This year CFA Women’s Reference Group members will be attending forums hosted by the Emergency Services Foundation to highlight what they are doing to support and inspire women in CFA.
This year’s theme is ‘Choose to challenge’ and CFA Women’s Reference Group members are attending IWD forums hosted by the Emergency Services Foundation to share information about the work they are doing to support and inspire women in CFA and how they are challenging subconscious social stereotypes about who should be in operational and leadership roles.
We sat down with one of our West Region Women’s Reference Group member and Ballarat City Fire Brigade Captain Nicole McGrath to talk about her experience in CFA and the West Region Women’s Reference Group.
Nicole has been a member of Ballarat City Fire Brigade since March 1998 and currently holds the position of Captain.
Nicole got involved in the West Region Women’s Reference Group when it was established in June 2019.
“I got involved because I'm passionate about supporting the development of CFA’s future women leaders and fostering the skills they contribute to leadership roles, as well as supporting increased participation of women across all areas of CFA however they choose to be involved.” Nicole said.
Although they have only been established for a short time the West Region Women’s Reference Group have already finalised governance for the group and embedded how they fit alongside the District Planning Committee (DPC) and its sub committees.
“We have been well supported by DPC who changed their constitution to allow for two reps from our Women's Reference Group to be included not just on DPC but also on each of the sub committees.”
The Women’s Reference Group provides a way for women across CFA to connect and get support and ideas for how they can excel in their role within their brigade.
“Some of the things we have done so far include supporting a proposal from one of our members for an alternate more narrow fitting boot, begun plans for women only training
sessions across a broad range of topics ideally to be hosted by Groups, supported and continue to advocate for women to take up offers of training for Ground Observing and we are supporting a women's MVA awareness session to be held by one of our D15 Rescue accredited brigades in the near future.”
The focus of the West Region Women’s Reference Group for majority of the last few months has centred around planning and organising their statewide CFA IWD event to highlight how they are ‘Choosing to Challenge”.
“We are choosing to challenge by choosing to challenge the status quo. By asking ourselves to challenge our own thinking, by challenging others’ perceptions and by beginning to normalise seeing women participating in roles within CFA that otherwise have had low to no participation of women. As well as advocating to remove barriers that unfairly impact the participation of women and by providing support networks and mentoring for CFA women.”
Nicole is excited to be attending the International Women’s Day event being hosted by the Emergency Services Foundation in Melbourne on Tuesday 16 March.
“I’m looking forward to hearing how other organisations are working to support the participation of women, any challenges faced by women that are not unique to CFA and how I can learn from those experiences, as well as to hear from other women leaders and acknowledge the work done by women in emergency services”.
Find out more and register to attend one of the many International Women’s Day events here.