In the past, female involvement within the Country Fire Authority was restricted to making sandwiches and cups of tea for men who went out to fight fires, but now, many women are also crawling from their beds in the middle of the night to jump into a fire truck and respond to an emergency.

While volunteer firefighters have been steadily declining in Victoria in recent years, in the past decade, the growth of female involvement within the CFA has grown. Currently 23 per cent of volunteers across the CFA are female, while 15 per cent of the organisation's volunteer firefighters are women.

While this still seems relatively small, the organisation has a statewide target to increase the participation of female firefighters and female leaders by 5 per cent.

In order to assist with increasing not just female involvement but to encourage women to take up leadership positions within the organisation, a group of a dozen women in District 15 recently founded a Women's Reference Group.

The group is endeavouring to encourage as many women as possible from across the district to participate, including representatives from each of the eight groups in District 15.

They hope that if females view others leading change, it will break down barriers in an organisation that is already in the midst of considerable change, with the move towards paid firefighters becoming Fire Rescue Victoria.

"Our aim is to increase the percentage of women volunteers, but also to increase the percentage of women in leadership positions," Margret Lockwood, chair of the District 15 Women's Reference Group said.

The group has representation on the district planning committee as well as its sub committees, so that female volunteers across the district have input into the likes of how firefighters train.

Across Victoria similar women's networks have been established, in order to create a place for women to connect, discuss challenges and opportunities for change and improvement to the experiences of women within the CFA.

When Margret Lockwood first decided she wanted to become a firefighter about 20 years ago, her husband told her that Glenlyon was too conservative - a community made up of multi generational farmers - and that they wouldn't want a woman to join.

She was approached by the Ladies Auxiliary Group, who asked if she wanted to assist with feeding the firefighters, but she knocked that request back. Then, about five years later, after retiring from teaching and at a time when it had become more acceptable for women to join, Ms Lockwood joined the brigade after being inspired by seeing Kate Smith of Trentham driving a tanker.

Today, while some brigades are still conservative, many women are supported by their brigades - including the brigades the women are a part of - as volunteer firefighters and to train further than the minimum required skills.

"I love being active and going out on to the fire ground," Ms Lockwood said. "What I really enjoy is the camaraderie and just being out there. Achieving a task and getting a good result by working hard with other people. And knowing you've done something good for your community."

Daylesford Fire Brigade's Kayla Manning joined the brigade on her 16^th birthday. Her father was 3^rd lieutenant at the time and growing up around the fire station, she always knew she wanted to join.

"I never had a female role model or anything like that but was still pretty keen to join and turn out and fight fires," she said. "I didn't think anything was really going to stop me from turning out on a truck."

Last year the gardener and landscaper had the most turn outs of her brigade, clocking up 84 in the year from January until November.

She said joining the CFA had made her more confident as a person and that along the way she had learnt many skills applicable to life outside the fire station. While initially believing she would simply volunteer as a firefighter, she is now a crew leader.

Meanwhile, Indre Kisonas joined Daylesford Fire Brigade a year ago after the shock of the Hepburn fire, when flames licked so close to the township that many realised how such incidents could so easily impact a community.

While her initial reservations were that it would be too physically dominating, she was inspired by Margret to join.

In order to encourage more young people and women to join, a number of initiatives are undertaken.

While some brigades such as Glenlyon conduct a junior program for 12 to 16-year-old people to learn about firefighting, with the opportunity to apply to join the junior brigade at 16, Sebastopol Fire Brigade's Vanessa Park, who is the secretary of the Women's Reference Group, wants to take the encouragement of youth involvement one step further.

Also joining a senior brigade at 16, she wishes to reinstate the Youth Reference Group to ensure younger people are represented in the same way the women's reference group aspires to involve females.

What she enjoys most about being a firefighter is helping people within the community when they need it the most, but her annual highlight is participating in the Cops N Kids program.

Since joining, all of the women have travelled around the state as part of strike teams, including the majority most recently to East Gippsland, and all believe it has been a fantastic way to connect to their communities, lend a helping hand and make new friends.

In addition to the challenges all CFA volunteer firefighters face such as being able to leave work at the drop of a hat to turn out to fight a fire or respond to a car accident or medical incident, there are other challenges specific to women.

These include the perception women are weaker or less capable, uniforms that don't fit properly and not having easy access to toilet facilities when at an incident for a significant amount of time.

While there is often the misconception that a person needs to be extremely fit and strong to be a firefighter, as long as training is attended regularly and the person utilises the correct techniques, with the addition of new technology that is making the job easier for firefighters, everybody is able to try their hand at it.

Fire brigades are made up of a volunteers with diverse strengths and abilities and responding to incidents is always a group effort involving team work.

"Being volunteers, we are such a diverse range and we all bring different abilities. So we all are all different heights, weights and have different strengths but we can all have a crack at it," Ms Manning said.

While still relatively new, the group has been involved in various initiatives including a Women in the West practical training day at Longerenong Training Campus near Horsham last year, at which women trained with other women. A Women's Burn Camp at Cape Clear, so women get experience with fighting live fire, driving tankers and burning off is also coming up.

It is also looking at a rotating childcare initiative, so parents who want to join have more flexibility.

While the CFA recently brought in women's pants, for Ms Kisonas, her ultimate goal is to get boots and helmets specific to women's sizing.

The current group of women are in caretaker positions until an election is hosted in June.

The group encourages more women to head down to the station to check it out and to consider joining the CFA in firefighting, leadership roles and even non-firefighting roles such as treasurer or helping with the garden.

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