Women started in the fire service back in 1815 when slave Molly Williams took on the job for the Oceanus Engine Company #11. Now, 200 years later, we see thousands of women take on the job and duty that comes with being a firefighter. It is not all cut and dry, though. Being in a male-dominated industry has challenges and difficulties, specifically with the gear for firefighting they receive regularly. Traditional designs of firefighting apparel center around men, making it difficult for women to move and operate during a critical mission. Personal equipment should be personalized and optimized for high performance. Here at CrewBoss, we took on this problem head-on and created Ember.
A History of Women in Fire
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After Molly Williams, many of the earlier women in fire are unknown due to the strain of history. But their actions are still remembered in New Jersey and Connecticut. In 1910, roles for women began to expand, including a volunteer firefighting department in Maryland that lasted for nearly ten years. World War II brought many women into the fire service due to the labor shortage, with the creation of two departments in Illinois crewed only by women.
The beginning of the 1970s normalized women in firefighting across the country, reducing the stigma around being a woman firefighter. Even though the ratio of men to women still leans heavily towards men to this day, the era of women-only fire departments ended with the normalization. Today over 6,500 women are estimated to hold firefighter roles in the country, with thousands of counterparts in other countries. These stories are still ongoing.
Ember Comes to Help
For several years, CrewBoss had been talking to women firefighters entering into wildland, and when discussed, they shared that it’s difficult for them to work around ill-fitting, male-sized, male-designed wild brush jackets, brush shirts, and brush pants. All they can do is fit into one of them that has the closest size or fit. The lack of accessibility is not ideal, especially when your life and the lives of others are on the line when faced with large forest fires. Essentially, they don’t have safety wear specifically for them, so they have to make something work instead. Unfortunately, we started to hear women wearing things issued to them, not from us, but outside of us, that are so horribly fitting that it puts them even more at risk.
They try to hike, and their rise is too low. The bagginess impairs them. Wildland firefighting is a rigorous job that is already hard, but now even more difficult because of such ill-fitting garments. Nothing around that is safe, so we decided to engage more and more throughout the years because we understood there is a solution desperately needed for women’s wildland and flame-resistant clothing. Over the past three years, we have received multiple questions asking whether we had a women’s cut. After hearing enough, we decided to create our own line: Ember. Since there was no mainstream option for women’s wear with what we had then, we decided to design an equitable choice that would fit them going forward.
When designing the product, we began by looking at the women who made the comments in the first place. Usually, when someone asks about a product, they are passionate about it. So it was a good idea to start with them. Additionally, they want to see something they’re excited about getting created, so they gave some great feedback. We began by asking, “What is it that you need? What is it that you're not getting?" That started the conversation.
Hannah Key Haley, who spearheaded the action, already had access to a network of women discussing the issue via blogs and other platforms. The lack of access to women’s protective gear had a following ready for a change. It made us understand how big of an issue that was. Haley became instrumental in having the product made in the first place. She gave us a ton of feedback on wildland gear they were already using, and we started noticing trends in what they were saying. We used those trends and designed the first iteration of the women's wildland fire pants and shirt. Even on the first try, it was better than what they had already been using. Women’s fire-resistant shirts and pants were now in the process of becoming a reality.
Everyone who tried it was excited, so we were excited to continue pushing the boundaries of what we could do. We started to take more feedback after tests and used it to polish what we already had established. Multiple trial runs happened, and over a few years, we were successfully able to pinpoint what each garment needed down to the millimeter. It worked well for the evaluators.
We also wanted to look at a more inclusive range of sizing for women. The alpha form of sizing for fire shirts and pants generally tends to go from small, medium, to large. But we changed things up and started offering numerical sizing to fit all bodies that try on the fire uniforms. Adjustments included acknowledging things like bust measurements and pants based on waist measurements. Once we did that, the apparel was much more well-received. Each time it got better and better.
By the beginning of each season, we ensure the year’s line of firefighter wildland gear is ready so that they have a complete season to evaluate the clothing and give us feedback. Timing the distribution helps with the overall assessment of what we’re doing. At first, we only offered the apparel with Tecasafe fabric, but it now includes women’s Nomex, Advance, and Pioneer clothing. If you want to learn more about these fabrics, you can read all about them here.
CrewBoss Product Designer Jeff Yee works on sample garments for the Ember line.
“It feels good to do this because we design multiple products for the CrewBoss brand and have never before designed a product that we believe was so desperately needed. It feels good to fill a need that women have been waiting for a long time,” said product designer Jeff Yee. Work shirts are essential for every job, and this career path is no different. Women have to work just as hard, if not harder than their counterparts. They must have functional protection equipment, there needs to be a sense of professionalism, and they need to keep coming back because it’s effective and to their satisfaction.
Ember is one of the first certified women’s wildland gear. The important thing about it is that the design aspects of Ember were just given to us by women. To be clear, we did not design this garment, and it makes the product line special because we can deliver what we know they want and not what we think they want. The issue women faced were fire-resistant shirts that were either too tight or too loose. Also, we noticed that a lot of women’s wear, in general, is made to fit their bodies. We added features such as bustards to provide a better fit. We also built a slimmer fit in the Nomex wildland fire pant’s waist to give more contour. We added more mobility in the arms through pleated action back features.
With the pants, the rise was the biggest issue. For many wildland pants before, if the rise fit, the pants were too tight. So, if they wanted pants that were not tight around the seat, then the rise was too long. More issues that just hindered mobility came up too. The goal was to have fire-resistant pants that allowed women to hike up steep inclines or move through the brush where they wouldn't have to fight against their clothing. We decreased the rise enough so that it was comfortable yet provided mobility and airflow, a necessity in women’s protective gear. Furthermore, we designed it to accommodate all of these things and to have performance properties of the fabric to still function as quality clothing for firefighters.
We usually offer an elastic band in our fire pants, and we do this because, during the fire season, there’s a fluctuation in waist size due to strenuous work. They may come in with a slightly larger waist, but by the end of the season, their waist may have shrunk. We have this in all our CrewBoss fire pants to address that. Additionally, we offer nice volume pockets so firefighters can store gear to use later when needed. All CrewBoss fire pants come in numerical waist sizes so that we have more of a range to fit.
Because of Ember, everybody has a garment that will fit them correctly by design. It will allow them to do their job safely, and women can wear something they feel good about. It’s why we launched Ember in 2021 and continue to create high-quality firefighter apparel for women. It took two and a half years of testing to make it possible, and we appreciate all of the women firefighters, feds, private contractors, volunteers, and those involved with fire who gave us the input to make the optimal fire-resistant clothing for women. We could not have cultivated this without them.
We didn’t just check the box of having women’s wildland clothing in our fire store. We wanted to do it right and took the time to ensure our customers were happy. We know that our competition had women’s cuts but nothing like ours. We made it from the feedback, the wear trial, and the input from the women in wildland firefighting.
Each year, more and more women enter wildland, and they deserve clothing they feel safe in, that they can do their job well in, and that fits them perfectly. What’s special about this is we can offer CrewBoss women’s cuts, and the Ember line is ideal for that. Women can feel good about it, and they know they can go to a place that has them in mind every fire season.
Shop Ember line here.
