Two high-ranking female firefighters in North Carolina suing employers, alleging discrimination

Two high-ranking female firefighters in North Carolina are in the process of suing their former employers, alleging they were subjected to demeaning behavior that ultimately ended their careers, The Associated Press reported.

Joy Ponder, the highest-ranking female firefighter in Asheville, filed a sex discrimination lawsuit in a North Carolina district court in November.

Susanna Schmitt Williams, the first female chief of a municipal fire department in North Carolina, filed her own lawsuit in January.

The lawsuits shine a light on the discrimination women face in a male-dominated field.

In the suit, Ponder said she faced harassment and gender discrimination from Chief Scott Burnette, alleging that he consistently treated her in a “personally demeaning, hostile and harassing manner.” 

Ponder also said in her lawsuit that she faced harassment and discrimination after she helped conduct a research study about post-traumatic stress disorder among firefighters. The suit says she was “repeatedly questioned and aggressively challenged” in regard to the study by Burnette and others.

The male co-author, the suit notes, was “never questioned or challenged concerning the Study.”

Burnette did not return the AP’s phone call for comment, and an assistant to the city manager said the city doesn’t comment on ongoing lawsuits.

Williams said she also faced years of sexual harassment in the workplace in Carrboro, causing her at one point to consider taking her own life, the AP reported.

Williams told the AP that she was “the subject of sexualized rumors [and] hostility in the form of insubordination by those who reported to me.”

She was ultimately fired in July 2019, according to the AP.

Williams said, according to the AP, that the town manager of Carrboro overturned her disciplinary and operation decisions.

According to the AP, Williams said she filed two complaints of sexual discrimination against members of the fire department during her time as chief, but neither one was taken seriously.

Similar lawsuits have been filed and won in states across the country, the AP reported, including in Illinois, Texas and Virginia. 

According to figures from the National Fire Protection Association cited by the AP, 93,700, or 8 percent, of U.S. firefighters were female in 2018, the latest year that there is data available.