I can’t believe Hollyweird hasn’t addressed the problem of not enough female firefighters. Every cop show, CSI for example, has females as the lead investigators or body disectors. I don’t know what the real ratio is, but according to Hollyweird, females now make up about fifty percent of big city police forces. It’s now time to give fire departments the same treatment, the facts be damned.
Well, the physical requirements for a police officer are somewhat different from those for a firefighter. But getting to the point about TV shows, most cop shows have a format where they focus on one partnership of two people, plus a cast of supporting characters. It makes sense from a ratings point of view to have one of the two main characters be female, as female viewers will want someone to relate to and male viewers will want something nice to look at (most men love girls with guns). And of course for the people in charge, ratings are everything.
In real life, about 10 to 15 percent of big-city police forces are female. Reality is what it is, and Hollywood isn’t going to change reality, it just provides entertainment. I don’t know anyone who looks at Hollywood as an encyclopedia of facts.