n who have become firefighters, and keep women from advancing to leadership positions in the field. The organization Women in the Fire Service, Inc., estimates that there are about 40,000 paid and volunteer women firefighters in the United States today. This is only about 3.6 percent of the total number of paid and volunteer firefighters, however. (Richardson, 2001) The Women in the Fire Service, Inc. is the only organization which gathers statistics on the total number of women firefighters. According to government statistics, only about 5,000 women hold positions as career firefighters. The U. S. Department of Labor gives the figure of a mere 1.9 percent for the percentage of women firefighters among career firefighters. (Richardson, 2001) With projections that th
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