Alexabbe's List: Brenda Berkman FDNY

• Captain Brenda Berkman has been a crusader for women in the emergency services since she challenged the barriers to women entering the New York City Fire Department in a successful law suit in the late 70s, a fight chronicled in the 2006 PBS documentary 'Taking the Heat.'
• went on to become one of the highest ranking women in the NYFD over the course of her 25 year career.
• Huffington Post Women caught up with Berkman to talk about the part women played in the rescue effort at Ground Zero on and after September 11th and how their role has been covered in the media.

• How many women belonged to the New York City Fire Department on 9/11?

    

  There was a very small number. [There were] 11,000 or so [firefighters in the FDNY], and there were approximately 25 [female] firefighters. Our numbers were very tiny. When I won my lawsuit and I brought women into the NYFD in 1982, there were 42 of us. Now there are 29.

• Was the work that women were doing in any way different from the work men were doing?

    

  No, no. We were doing exactly the same things. I was operating as a New York City fire officer from the time I got there on 9/11 to the time that the site closed. I was doing my job the way I was doing my job before 9/11, alongside of all my male peers. We didn't have any restrictions on our service, like even now some of the women in the military have. We did everything, and so there was nothing different between what we were doing and what the men were doing.
• f women composed such a small percentage of the department at the time, why is it important to spotlight their role specifically at Ground Zero?
   
   It took me awhile to realize while I was in college in the 1970's that there were important women in history, we just didn't learn about them
• They were risking their lives and their health, right alongside their male co-workers, and I simply couldn't understand why that story wasn't being told.
• [These women] were patriots. They were self sacrificing, and they were brave, and they were hard-working, and they were taking risks, and they were serving their community. I mean, how inspiring is that? Why wouldn't you want to tell that story?

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