Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is ongoing problem with fire departments around the country. The fire fighting profession is an occupation dominated by males. Women face many hardships from the fire department and from their fellow workers. Even though the sexual harassment clearly takes place in the fire department, it is rarely ever documented for different reasons.
It is hard for women to tell anyone about harassment issues in the fire department because often times they feel scared to do so. It is unfortunate that women are forced to feel this way but understandable why women do. When women have been surveyed about the issue of sexual harassment in the fire department and asked why women rarely report incidents they have very real reasons as to why. They do not want to be labeled as “trouble-makers” and feel that if they do report these incidents that their fellow fire fighters will look down upon these women. It is a hard place to be when you are outnumbered as much as women are in the fire department. Also the women surveyed felt that if they were to report any incidents that they would probably end up losing their job. They feel this way because it is as if whenever a women takes legal action against another employee, they often do not come back to work. Often women will just not say anything so as not to be “singled” out more than they already are in this profession, and just hope that the harassment stops.
It is a horrible thing to imagine that in this day and age women are still this uncomfortable at their profession. When these issues keep happening it is not the women that are to blame or even the men; the institution is failing them. The institution is failing these women because they are not making them feel comfortable enough to speak out about problems in the job. There needs to be a change because sexual harassment should not occur in the workplace and in the fire department it seems as if it is not being taken serious enough.