Case Study: Occupational Segregation - Cleveland Fire Brigade

Cleveland Fire Brigade is keen to attract a more diverse workforce and to meet Government targets on recruiting more women as fire fighters. They have introduced a range of measures:

• Working with local schools to challenge gender stereotyping of occupations
• Feeding articles into the local media and ensuring that all publicity has female representation
• Attending as many local forums as possible and working with other organisations challenging gender stereotyping
• Piloting a partnership with Job Centre Plus, working with unemployed people from under-represented groups and assisting them in developing skills to apply to be fire fighters
• Raising the profile of women in the brigade so that people are aware that the fire service is comprised of more than just men and that women work in areas other than the control centre.

Breaking down in-house gender stereotyping through equality and diversity training and on-going publicity and awareness

In 2005/06 Cleveland Fire Brigade recruited 7 women fire fighters, a 150% improvement on the previous years’ figures. They now have 16 female fire fighters, 12 whole time and 4 retained.

New activities include:

• Designing positive action initiatives around those candidates who were not successful in the last regional recruitment to ‘keep’ them in the system and encourage them to apply in the future.
• Undertaking a proactive approach to retained recruitment and doubling the number of retained female fire fighters.
• Working with a local university to determine the community’s perception of fire fighting as a career option.
• Becoming 4^th out of 46 for the Best Value Performance Indicators for the % of women who are in the top 5% of earners.
• Positive action events have taken place and more are planned
• Diversity Champions across the Brigade include those with a specific remit for promoting gender issues