With seven active female members the Kalkallo Fire Brigade has the highest amount of female participation the brigade can recall having.
The female members participate in various ways – operationally in firefighting roles, community engagement activities and administrative roles.
A member of the brigade for six years, social media manager Ally Watson has seen members begin CFA journeys with Kalkallo and others transfer across.
“We’ve got quite a rich depth of background of experience with the CFA in our women members and it’s really exciting,” she said.
“When you ask all of them why they want to be involved it’s really around participating in the community, giving back to the community and being a part of the community.
“Everybody has their own individual reasons for joining the CFA but overall being a part of the community seems to be the collective reason why we do it.”
The CFA is taking steps to increase gender diversity and inclusion.
Ms Watson is a part of this progress, being appointed to the CFA Women’s Advisory Committee.
The committee represents women across Victoria, directly engaging with the chief executive, chief officers and other executives and seniors on opportunities to support diversity and inclusion.
“I’m really excited to see that there’s a lot of things happening in CFA to address that gender inclusion,” Ms Watson said.
“There has been things throughout my time – and I’m not going to sugar coat it – when it hasn’t been great and it hasn’t been a great experience.
“But there’s also been a lot of times when it has been a great experience and I think for myself, and not that I want to speak on behalf of everybody, but I think everybody would say there is opportunity there.
“It has traditionally been a very male dominated space but it doesn’t have to be and it shouldn’t be. It should be a space where anybody who wants to join the CFA can and help protect the community.”
Alongside her appointment to the committee, Ms Watson said attending her first big fire in Bunyip in 2019 after being qualified for a few months was a standout moment.
“I think for any firefighter that moment where you become qualified as a wildfire general firefighter and you go to your first fire particularly if it’s a big one,” she said.
“When I was doing a lot of my training, I was the only female that was doing training so there were some challenges around there around sometimes some of the comments thrown around and things like that.
“But in terms of highlights there hasn’t been one single thing.”
Ms Watson said the Kalkallo Fire Brigade provided a great opportunity to get to know people in the area and encouraged people to have view the volunteer roles through the CFA website.
“Not everybody wants to be on the back of a fire truck so making space for different kinds of contributions and now seeing that, now seeing people come in and do stuff it’s great,” she said.
“I would really encourage people to have a look at the website because not every role has to be firefighting.
“There’s lots of things that need to be done to run a brigade.”
to see volunteer roles and opportunities.
