Culture change in fire services is often framed around policy, structure, and leadership. But culture is also shaped by whose experiences are heard, whose knowledge is trusted, and whose stories are believed.
In male-dominated environments such as firefighting, lived experience has long been treated as secondary to formal expertise. Operational data is prioritized. Personal experience is dismissed as anecdotal or subjective. For women and marginalized groups, this has meant that harm can be widespread and well known, yet repeatedly minimized.
“Story is how systems reveal themselves. If you refuse to listen, you refuse to learn.”
Lived experience is knowledge
For those outside the dominant norm, lived experience is not abstract. It is cumulative and ongoing. It shapes who feels welcome in the station, who is scrutinized, who is supported, and who is protected. It influences decisions about speaking up, staying silent, or leaving altogether.
When women and other marginalized firefighters share their experiences, they are often asked to justify them. To prove seriousness. To show the issue was not a misunderstanding or an exception. Systems are trusted. People are questioned.
Many of the issues now documented in formal reviews were first raised through lived experience. Stories identified patterns long before reports confirmed them. The problem has rarely been a lack of insight. Instead, it has been a lack of listening.
Storytelling as a way of knowing
From an Indigenous perspective, storytelling is not separate from learning. It is how knowledge is carried, shared, and held to account. Stories connect individual experience to collective responsibility and show how systems operate in practice, not just how they are designed to function.
When organizations dismiss lived experience as anecdotal, they privilege one form of knowledge over others. In doing so, they reinforce the same power structures that equity work seeks to challenge.
The Cost of Silence
When experiences are dismissed or ignored, individuals carry the cost through isolation, self-doubt, and attrition. Organizations carry it through lost capability, fractured trust, and repeated cycles of harm that surface only when they escalate into complaints, reviews, or public scrutiny.
Many women and other marginalized firefighters learn quickly that sharing their story carries risk. Over time, this shapes who stays, who progresses, and whose voices shape the future of the service.
Beyond listening without action
Inviting people to share their stories is not enough. Too often, lived experience is gathered through surveys and consultations, then set aside once the process ends.
For storytelling to contribute to culture change, it must lead to action. Patterns must be acknowledged. Systems must change. Accountability must follow. Without this, requests for lived experience become another burden placed on those already navigating exclusion.
Changing culture means changing who is heard
Fire services understand the value of learning from near misses and operational debriefs. The same discipline can be applied inward. Lived experience offers early warning, context, and insight into how systems perform under real conditions.
Stories alone will not transform service culture. But without listening to them, and acting on what they reveal, change will remain partial and fragile.
Culture shifts when lived experience moves from the margins to the centre of how organisations understand risk, accountability, and success.
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