{"id":9752,"date":"2022-08-08T08:28:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T12:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=9752"},"modified":"2022-08-05T16:24:28","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T20:24:28","slug":"fighting-fires-and-gender-norms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2022\/08\/08\/fighting-fires-and-gender-norms\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting Fires and Gender Norms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Cat Lewis \u201914 didn\u2019t know she was about to break a glass ceiling. When she took the tests to become a member of the Long Beach, N.Y., fire department, she didn\u2019t know that it was a century-old institution. She didn\u2019t know that they\u2019d never had a woman on the job, much less a paid one. And she definitely didn\u2019t know that she\u2019d end up on The Drew Barrymore Show<\/em>, transforming into an inspiration for girls around the country dreaming of becoming first responders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of people are used to seeing the fire truck drive by and seeing four guys in the back, but now they see my ponytail and they immediately light up with a smile,\u201d Lewis said on Barrymore\u2019s show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rewind. How can you become a symbol for change without knowing it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After spending a few years teaching NYC 4-year-olds as part of a Teach for America program, Lewis earned her master\u2019s degree in early childhood education and special education. \u201cThat responsibility and being in a lower socioeconomic community and really playing a pivotal role in these young children\u2019s lives was pretty eye-opening,\u201d she recalls. Upon graduation, she looked for physical education roles at private schools in the city. It seemed like a good way to combine her passions for teaching children and playing sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, in the back of her mind, she kept seeing a different child \u2014 herself. \u201cGrowing up, I always had this fascination with the FDNY,\u201d she remembers. \u201cI knew a ton of people who were on the job, but I really never knew any female firefighters.\u201d She filled out the application, but with a pool of approximately 50,000, it was a long waiting game to see if she\u2019d join New York\u2019s bravest. In the meantime, she came upon an opening at a smaller department, in Long Beach, N.Y., where she was already coaching and managing at a CrossFit gym.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She scored 100% on the written test; then came the physical fitness test. The standard is the same for men and women \u2014 you have to be able to pull someone out of a burning building, after all \u2014 and while some women had tried in the past, none had ever succeeded. But because she was already in shape, thanks to consistent training dating back to her Colgate basketball days and working as a CrossFit trainer, Lewis says she had an easier time. \u201cI was, for the last six years, living in a gym training other people, but also really working on my own fitness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some ways, working in the firehouse is just like the movies: They slide down a pole, landing near the truck that takes them to emergencies. But what you don\u2019t see on TV are the 24-hour shifts spent preparing for some of the worst accidents imaginable, which can stir up anxiety. \u201cWhen you can sleep, you try to sleep and hope there are no crazy emergencies throughout the night, but there often are,\u201d Lewis says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The camaraderie among members of the department helps ease those troubles. The Long Beach firehouse serves as a second home for Lewis, and the firefighters celebrate birthdays, have afternoon coffee, and even keep up their physical fitness together. Lewis helps with that one. She writes and leads her team through daily workouts: \u201cMore often than not, we\u2019ll start working out, and then we\u2019ll get called out [to an emergency]. [When] we come back, we finish our workout,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lewis studied sociology at Colgate, and she says the skills she learned in her courses, like considering other perspectives when assessing a situation, keep her working relationships strong. \u201cWorking and living in the firehouse is tough because you have a whole new family, [there are] people from different backgrounds [who] have different opinions, and everyone feels comfortable enough to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrymore wanted to help the department foster those relationships: Someone from her show DM\u2019d Lewis about appearing on the show, which led to Barrymore redesigning the firehouse\u2019s lounge space. \u201cCat Lewis has made history, or \u2018herstory\u2019 as we now say, as the first career female firefighter in the city of Long Beach, N.Y.,\u201d Barrymore said on the show. \u201cAny man, woman, or child is going to watch you, Cat, and dream and think about possibilities, and hopefully \u2026 rise to the occasion you have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider that ceiling broken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cat Lewis \u201914 gained the attention of Drew Barrymore when Lewis became the first paid female firefighter in Long Beach, N.Y.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1263,"featured_media":9809,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2],"tags":[354,1062,260],"coauthors":[158],"class_list":["post-9752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alumni-news","category-alumni-updates","tag-alumni","tag-firefighter","tag-sociology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-2xi","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2022\/08\/GenderFireResize.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9752"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10169,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9752\/revisions\/10169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9752"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}