The Honolulu Fire and Emergency Medical Services departments are still sorting the pros and cons of a controversial proposed merger that has been championed by Mayor Kirk Caldwell as a life and money-saving opportunity. Perhaps the biggest critics of joining the departments are female EMTs and paramedics who fear a merger could mean reverting to a male-dominated work culture not seen at EMS since the 1990’s.

Women account for 32 percent of the county’s EMS workers, but just 1 percent of its firefighters. This statistic, coupled with the fact that the fire department is five times larger than EMS, has roused some female EMS workers to voice concerns about how a merger might alter their work lives. Would they be subject to tougher physical requirements? Would they have to fight fires? How would they cope with the absence of women’s restrooms and sleeping quarters at the county’s fire houses?

There are a dozen female firefighters currently employed by the county. If the Fire and EMS departments were to merge today there would be about 80 women working alongside 1,285 men.

Jennifer Altomare, a paramedic, said she has a great working relationship with the firemen and foresees no issues in working more closely with them. But she fears she wouldn’t be able to meet the physical and emotional requirements of the job if she were forced to cross-train as a firefighter-paramedic.

“If I had to actually go into a fire I think I’d probably still be scared, even if I had a lot of great training,” she said.

Joint fire and EMS services have become popular in recent years as the number of 9-1-1 calls for medical emergencies have outnumbered those for fires. Many mainland cities require firefighters to deliver advanced medical care in addition to knocking down blazes. Likewise, many paramedics and EMTs are now cross-trained in fire fighting.

Few details have been released about how a merged Fire and EMS department would function here on Oahu. The merger has so far been touted as a money-saving mechanism. A 2011 report produced by Emergency Services Consulting International claims that combining the two services would increase productivity and eliminate duplicate services, thereby saving as much as $10 million over five years. The merger has been criticized, however, by EMS Chief Patty Dukes and other stakeholders who think it’s being considered for the wrong reasons.

“It’s like a shotgun marriage,” said Dukes, who in 2004 became the first female EMS chief of a major U.S. city. “It’s like going on a blind date and then being forced into a marriage and neither party is happy about it.”

Dukes said merging the rescue squads to save a buck is short-sighted. And she’s not convinced any additional benefits are worth the trouble of trying to meld two diverse work cultures. Specifically, she worries what might happen to the female-friendly culture at EMS if the department were to combine with a fire service that’s largely unaccustomed to working with women.

Dukes was one of six women employed at EMS when she was hired in 1984. There are now about 70 female EMTs and paramedics.

“When I joined EMS, it was a nontraditional job for women,” said Dukes. “But going into it I never really gave it a thought that I was stepping into a male-dominated world. But I definitely had experiences where I was forced to acknowledge it. I would hear periodically, ‘Oh, well that’s what happens when you let a woman into the department.’ And it wasn’t meant to be a mean thing, but that was just the attitude.”

Paramedic Laura Kumamoto said she would not look forward to firefighter cross-training.

“I don’t want to be a firefighter,” she said. “The women that they have in that department are pretty tough cookies. The physical nature of their job is much more strenuous than ours. I couldn’t do what the women in that department do, nor would I want to. I’ve been in this field for almost 20 years because I want to be a paramedic. I don’t want to cross-train as a firefighter-paramedic.”

Capt. Terry Seelig, spokesman for the Fire Department, said the intent of a merger has never been to strip away all distinctions between those who fight fires and those who treat patients. But he noted the absence of a strategy detailing how exactly the duties would be divvied up among a merged workforce.

“Whatever the model is, in all the stakeholder meetings we’ve had, there never has been a desire to change people’s present jobs,” said Seelig. “It’s not practical, realistic or desirable to turn all the EMS workers into firefighters. What we’re trying to do is improve delivery in all areas and find efficiencies that help make for a more robust service.”

The wide disparity between the fire department’s male and female employees is not a localized problem. Women represent just 4.5 percent of career firefighters across the nation. More than half of all career fire departments employ no women at all, says Laura Baker, president of the International Association of Women in Fire and Emergency Services.

“Gender shouldn’t be an issue,” said Baker, who is also deputy chief of the Tuscon, Ariz. Fire Department. “Ideally everyone should be able to go to work and do their job without being scrutinized or harassed for their gender. But traditionally we know that’s not always the case with the culture of the fire service and we sometimes see these gender issues surface when there’s a merger.”

About 10 years ago the Honolulu Fire Department launched an initiative aimed at scoring more female recruits. Called “Can You Take The Heat?”, the program seeks to educate women about career firefighting and coach them on the hiring process. Female firefighters typically attend these sessions to discuss what it’s like to be a woman working among so many male firefighters and tips for keeping a healthy work-life balance.

In terms of applicants, the program appears to be working. The number of prospective female firefighters rose from 243 in 2008 to 435 in 2012, according to data from the County Human Resources Department. Seven female firefighters have been hired since 2007.

“When we first started doing this program in 2003 or 2004, we only had four female firefighters in the department,” said Seelig, the fire department spokesman. “Since then we’ve had as many as many as 13.”

Despite these gains, the department continues to fall behind the national gender ratio average for firefighters.

Gender issues aside, the potential merger has been controversial from the start and ended up playing a role in last year’s Honolulu mayoral race.

Civil Beat reported in June that EMS leadership was unhappy with Caldwell, who said in his 2012 campaign literature that EMS staffers would benefit from the merger because they would receive enhanced training and better equipment that would help them save lives. Some EMS workers were offended at Caldwell’s suggestion that their service needs improvement.

Now that Caldwell is mayor, the merger is still very much on the table.

Hawaii Department of Health officials, however, have cautioned against the merger, saying that moving forward with it presently would be “premature.” Last July, DOH officials were in the process of making official the department’s opposition to the merger with a formal letter addressed to then-Mayor Peter Carlisle. The department’s opinion on the merger is important because it provides EMS with $30 million in funding.

The Honolulu Ethics Commission is now investigating the process that resulted in a pro-merger organization winning a $175,000 contract to study the merits of combining operations.

Brittany Lyte is a freelance writer.