WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) – The highest ranking female firefighter in Asheville, North Carolina, says she was repeatedly discriminated against because of her sex and fought to keep her job while battling breast cancer. The first female chief of a municipal fire department in the state says she briefly pondered suicide after years of sexual harassment.
Joy Ponder and Susanna Schmitt Williams are among numerous female fighters in the United States who have filed lawsuits against their employers alleging they were subjected to demeaning behavior that helped end their careers.
Advocates say going to court is sometimes the only effective recourse in a field where women make up such a tiny part of the workforce. According to the National Fire Protection Association, 93,700, or 8%, of U.S. firefighters were female in 2018, the latest year for which data was available.
Williams, who was fired in July 2019, told The Associated Press that she was “the subject of sexualized rumors (and) hostility in the form of insubordination by those who reported to me.”
Williams said Carrboro Town Manager David Andrews overturned both her disciplinary and operational decisions, and for the latter, relied instead on the recommendations of men in the department who were lower ranked and had less experience and education. Andrews didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.