Agriculture and Farming

The experience of women firefighters involved in the disaster response to the 1994 NSW bushfires is explored using an eclectic feminist perspective. Accounts of non-stereotypic behaviour such as assertiveness, bravery and the leadership of men suggest a form of women's liberation which is anomalous to radical feminist prescriptions for improving women's social position. Using egalitarian rhetoric, firefighting women mostly did not identify with feminism, either because little was known about it or because of associations with ‘manhaters’. Women's accounts divulged experiences of self actualisation through adventurous and dangerous activities. Such experience, it is argued, is on the whole closed to women in the paid work force. The concept of habitus is discussed in reference to bushfire activities with an examination of class, status and childhood interests. As children, most women bicycled, played cricket and read Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Secret Seven, while some played football and rode horses. Generally, girls' shared activities with both parents. Adult experience was also said to be conducive to participation in the bushfires, although in one instance, marital conflict escalated to separate households after the fires.