Sarah Reasoner, Martha Fecht and Megan Roesler Turner have very different backgrounds and came to consider careers as St. Paul firefighters in very different ways.
Reasoner was a track and field All-American and onetime bodybuilder and powerlifter who wanted a career with a deeper purpose. Fecht, a St. Paul fire captain, went to Montana for a vacation and became a paramedic there. A Maplewood native, she leapt at the chance to return. And Roessler Turner was inspired to become a paramedic by the firefighters who revived a heart attack victim in the coffee shop where she worked. She is now a trainer at the academy.
All three survived the gantlet of training — men and women must meet the same physical requirements. But they know that many women get discouraged from trying.
They’ve started Twin Cities Female Firefighter Fitness (TCF3) to not only encourage women to consider firefighting, but to infuse them with the confidence, strength and stamina to win the job. Eye On St. Paul met with them last week to talk about their work empowering women to explore a male-dominated career.
This interview was edited for length.
Q: Tell me a little bit about how you’re trying to make firefighting a career option for more women.
Reasoner: It’s twofold. First, I don’t think very many girls grow up thinking, “I want to be a firefighter.” It’s not something that’s on a lot of women’s radars. The second part of what we’re doing is fitness and confidence, because there’s a large gap in the testing process and the percentage of women being able to successfully pass the test. I think biology plays a role in that and it is what it is.
We had a testing process this last fall and we saw the numbers — from women who said they were interested to the number that took the test — just drop. We went from 64 women who filled out interest cards down to 30 taking the practice tests.