Saudi Arabia's Female Firefighters Feel the Heat

November 3, 2009 10:00 p.m. EST

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (TML) - A new batch of Saudi female firefighters graduated from a civil protection course on Monday, bringing the total number of Saudi women trained in fire suppression to over 500.

32 women graduated from Jeddah's Effat University with training in control of small and large blazes.

The new graduates bring the number of Saudi women over the age of 17 to have been trained in safety and security maintenance over the past four years to 500.

Training women in firefighting is new to the kingdom.

Wajeha Al-Huwaidar, a Saudi women's rights activist, said the trend was a change from previous attempts to keep women out of the public eye.

"It's great," she told The Media Line. "Don't forget that women in this society are treated as irresponsible people. They always have to have a man to do things for them, so many thought this was only a show. Very few welcomed the idea."

"We should always encourage hardworking Saudi women to find jobs and be independent," Al-Huwaidar said. "Also, we don't have female fire fighters even though there's a need for them."

The Saudi kingdom practices a strict form of Sunni Islam and much of activity in the public sphere is segregated between men and women. "Our society is in need of a female cadre that specializes in this field in order to control fires that break out in all-girl educational and health institutions, as well as in homes," Sahar A-Zughbi, director of training at the institute of civil protection told the Saudi daily A-Riyadh. "[These institutions] are often exposed to dangers of fire as a result of negligence or because of the overload of electrical plugs and usage of faulty electricity points."

The women's training included sliding down ropes from roofs, using water hoses and fire extinguishers, locating the weakest point of the fire to tackle, applying first aid and rescue strategies and finding escape routes.

Several news items in the Saudi press were accompanied with photos of the graduates sporting firefighting uniforms and helmets. The stories received dozens of talkbacks on Saudi news sites, some comments indicating that not everyone is ready to accept women in an occupation traditionally dominated by men.

"The most important thing is that they shouldn't forget to put on their make up before they start putting out fires," Hamad Al-Yami wrote in a comment on the Al-Watan website. "If they get news of a fire, it will take them an hour just to apply their makeup before they leave and the fire will be over?this report is hilarious."

Another web pundit said the project was a "small step in the path of freedom and a journey of thousands miles starts with one step"

Several people commented on their uniforms, with some complaining that they were not Islamic. One reader wrote that such courses should be obligatory in all universities and colleges, while another said that calling these graduates firefighters was "an insult to real male firemen."