40 years ago Jenna Bergman paved the way for women to join the FDNY, winning a lawsuit against New York that made it possible for women to become firefighters for the first time in history.

After serving 25 years, a career that included acting as a first responder during 9/11, she decided to follow her passion for activism and arts.

She is the vice president of programs at the nonprofit organization Monumental Women which advocated for and secure the installation of the first monument in all of Central Park to honor real women.

Her own artwork as part of an exhibit at the 9/11 memorial and museum.

She has also been an author, teacher, White House alone, among many other things.

She joins me to talk about her life, her career and what ties all of those pursuits together.

Welcome to MetroFocus.

Brenda: It is great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Jenna: I want to hear about your groundbreaking career.

The FDNY is such a storied institution in New York and you broke a huge career as a woman to be able to serve as a firefighter.

Take me back to that time and tell me about that experience.

Brenda: people do not remember that prior to 1977, women were not even allowed to apply to become New York City firefighters.

It did not matter if you had won the Olympic gold medals or whatever or your entire family had been on the fire department, you were not allowed to even apply if you happened to be a woman.

That changed in 1977 in response to federal sex discrimination laws.

When women were allowed to apply, the city decided to change its test to make it the most difficult test Ever Given for any job in New York City.

A lot of people had doubts about women's physical capabilities, even about our courage to do dangerous things.

There was a lot of opposition among men and women to women coming on the job.

I believe the city was not actually testing for job related physical abilities.

When all of the women who took the physical portion of the exam field it and I felt it, I brought this lawsuit and I won.

That was the beginning of the struggle for women, a struggle that continues to go on today, to be fully integrated into the fire department.

Still very small numbers of women.

When I won my lawsuit, 40 of us came on together.

And then another woman was not hired for 10 years.

After that, three.

One of them retired recently.

Only now are we over 100 women in the New York City fire Department, and a department that has 11,000 members.

It has been an uphill battle.

I believe women had a lot to contribute to the fire service, to our communities.

We want to serve our communities the same way men do.

It is a great job.

It just was not the easiest thing for me when I came on because of a tremendous amount of resistance.

Jenna: I want to talk about your work once he retired, but very quickly, once you got in, how was it for you to be able to rise to Captain, and what a lot of accounts sounds like a boys club.

Brenda: Well, we do have civil service exams.

I studied, I got promoted to Lieutenant.

I study some more and got promoted to Captain.

I really like being an officer.

I liked having drilling and control over the day so that we could go out and do the things we were supposed to be doing.

I highly recommend to women that they study for promotion and take it when it comes along.

Thanks they get better for the first group of women as we went along.

But honestly, I still got some harassment on the day I retired.

Which just seems goofy to me because, why would people not want to make it a job where everybody feels like they are part of the team?

It is a dangerous job, it is a demanding job.

I really thought that all of us, men and women, should be working as one team.

Jenna: How did you take those experiences and use that to build your career in activism and art?

There is usually some sort of adversity for artists that drives them to create.

Brenda: I was an activist by the time I was a little girl.

I had interest that a lot of people believed little girls should not have, like sports.

We did not have title IX in those days.

Other things, like leadership roles.

When I came on the job as a firefighter in New York, I formed an organization because I knew the women had to work together and help each other out.

But I was trained as an historian.

I have a Masters degree from graduate school.

I was having an interest in women and people of color.

Marginalized groups.

And how they had been left out of the history books.

I thought this is not right.

Women clearly had a lot to contribute to our country over the years.

I was always interested in women in history.

I think learning about women in history, women like Sojourner Truth, Susan B Anthony, the first real women to be memorialized in Central Park in its 167 year history, that was not an easy task to get them in the park.

But they did so much to make our lives as women and men so much better than they were previously.

And they had to break a lot of barriers to do it.

And they inspired me.

I thought, if they could do these really difficult things, women were not allowed to speak in public.

Sojourner Truth had been born a slave.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton wanted to go to law school and could not go to law school.

All these things that they had to experience that were unfair and they continued to struggle.

Not just for their own benefit, but for the benefit of all of us.

I thought they could put up with that come I could certainly put up what was going on at the fire department.

History has always been an inspiration for me.

When I retired, I got involved with this group called Monumental Women.

We did not just put the statue in Central Park.

That was a seven year project.

We had to raise $1.5 million in private funds in order to do that.

When you go there, you can hear Viola Davis speaking as Sojourner Truth.

Meryl Streep as Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Rita Moreno in Spanish.

It is a great thing.

But we also have a women's rights history trail.

We are building on that so you can go all around the five boroughs and learn about women who did important things in New York City, the country and the world, things that have not been memorialized in our public spaces.

Jenna: Whenever I hear about people working on behalf of marginalized people, why do you think that they were left out?

Brenda: I still believe that women are regarded as unequal to men, even in these days.

And people of color, immigrants, people who do not have economic advantages.

There is a hierarchy that people still want to look down on other groups of people, which is inconceivable to me.

We are all stuck on this planet and it is important that we help each other to live our lives together.

So I cannot explain it other than some people need to feel like they are more important or better than other people.

And that women do not have what it takes.

We have seen over and over again how wrong that is.

Women have been on the New York City fire Department for 40 years.

One of the younger women and I made a book chronicling the history of women in the New York City fire Department because we knew the fire department was not going to do this.

[LAUGHTER] It is great.

We have from 1982 until 2022, all the different eras of women in the fire department and their various accomplishments.

When something does not get done, you have to do it.

Jenna: We have about 10 seconds left.

Your advice to young women who might be considering the fire department.

Brenda: Go for it.

It is a great job.

You have to prepare yourself, both mentally, physically.

Study and also physically trained for the exam, but there is an organization there to help you, but United women firefighters.

There were other people around, some of us old-timers who would love to see more women come on the job.

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