Love Island stereotype of male firefighters 'puts women off job'

Britain’s most senior firefighter has criticised Love Island for perpetuating sexist stereotypes about her colleagues that deter women from joining the fire brigade.

Dany Cotton, the London fire brigade (LFB) commissioner, said the reality series and other media were perpetuating a misconception that all firefighters are musclebound men.

She spoke as figures from a YouGov poll were released showing that 25% of women think men are more able than women to be a firefighter.

Respondents were asked: “Do you think men are more able to do the job, women are more able to do the job, or are they both equally able?”

In the same survey, just 7% of women thought men were more suited to the role of police officer.

Of just over 5,000 operational firefighters in the London Fire Brigade, there are around 300 women.

Concerns that gender stereotyping is deterring potential female recruits have led the LFB to back proposals by the Advertising standards authority (ASA) to ban sexist adverts.

Cotton has also written to 40 national and local news editors to ask them to stop using the term “fireman”, and to challenge sexist language – including one occasion where a newspaper referred to her as “he” in an article about sexist attitudes towards firefighters.

“It was 30 years ago that people were shocked to see women police officers and it’s frankly embarrassing that the public are still shocked to see women firefighters today,” Cotton said.

“Now it’s time for advertisers, journalists and marketers to stop relying on lazy cliches and help change attitudes which will in turn encourage more women to embark on a wonderful and fulfilling career in the fire service.”

Examples of sexist stereotypes cited in the brigade’s research include a Suzuki advert featuring Ant and Dec which mentioned “fireman training” and adverts for Harpic toilet cleaner, Müller yoghurts and Lynx deodorant which cast muscular white men in tight T-shirts as firefighters.

Love Island’s “fireman challenge” involved male contestants stripping down and pretending to save a stuffed cat toy stuck in a tree, in a sexualised portrayal of the role.

Cotton said: “When popular shows like Love Island roll out every offensive cliche possible with their so-called ‘fireman challenge’, it reinforces the misconception that all firefighters are musclebound men. No wonder so many young women are put off by that.”

YouGov’s poll, carried out in June 2017, surveyed 1,042 adults including 534 women. It also showed that over a quarter of Londoners think men are more able to be firefighters than women and that rises to nearly a third in the 18 to 24 age group.

Additional research by LFB into the factors deterring women from joining the brigade revealed concerns that fire and rescue is a “very masculine environment” and that “it’s a sexist field and quite male-dominated”.

One woman told researchers: “Growing up you would get some of the parents to come in [to school] and talk about what they do; mums never come in and talk about being a firefighter.”

The work is part of the LFB’s #Firefightingsexism campaign, which aims to break down the sexist stereotypes that still surround the fire and rescue industry.