In a cool semi-related follow-on to yesterday’s story about how more low-income women aren’t gaining access to our region’s financial boom because they’re not job ready, we see an example of how a fire department in our area is taking pro-active strides to make its work environment female friendly.

The Arlington County Fire Department just opened the first firehouse in our region that is "gender neutral," creating individual sleeping and showering spaces.  Cool.

Just for a bit more context, the Arlington fire department was the first in the nation to hire a woman as a professional fire fighter.  Today, nearly 10 percent of its firefighters are women.

Makes you wonder if they’re in cahoots at all with Prince George’s County’s female fire department employees, with their "hour of power" and talk of vision to victory. 

For it seems that Arlington certainly isn’t lacking in any vision around developing female friendly environments in departments that aren’t traditionally considered career tracks for women.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Blog, Safety, Women, Virginia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.