204. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton

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0:31This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:41Well behaved women rarely make history. Bloody difficult women do. You won't be surprised to learn that Sabrina Cohen-Hatton's life story has been snapped up for the big screen. She was homeless. She became a firefighter aged 18. She's now the top female fire chief in the country. Listen out when she goes to a party with her husband, who also happens to be a firefighter. And what happens next? Welcome to Difficult Women.

1:34Sabrina Rachel Cohen-Hatton is a senior British firefighter. She's an author and she's also a behavioural scientist. She's the first female to be the chief fire officer of Hampshire in the Isle of Wight. Another first. Why don't we just call this first women and be done with it? Definitely my first female fire chief. it's not surprising that Sabrina Cohen-Hatton's life story as told in her first book The Heat of the Moment has been snapped up for celluloid as she says or I think something like this Sabrina our average or our everyday is someone's worst day what a line and the Guardian said this book challenges assumptions about who firefighters are and about what women can do and we will get into your new book about gender bias of course anon but let's pause shall we before we run into that burning building and um and your new book and let's get into your your childhood because that really does seem to be the almost epitome of a pretty difficult childhood yeah it definitely was i mean i have a backstory that i know is by no means unique to me i grew up in a single parent household after my father died he had a brain humour from the time that I was quite small and he finally passed away when I was just nine.

2:57And my mum, she found it so hard to cope. She really struggled with her mental health after he passed away. And one of the things that I always say is that if somebody goes to war with their demons, it's everyone around them that gets hit by the shrapnel. And that was absolutely the case in our family. She had a business, but that went under. She couldn't cope. She loved us dearly, but couldn't have the mental or the physical resources to care for us properly. And so when that happens, you're raised to see any kind of authority figure through a lens of mistrust. So we had a very difficult, very isolating time.

3:39It was very volatile. And by the time I was 15, nearly 16, it was too much and I ended up leaving home and sleeping rough on the streets of a town in South Wales called Newport. It's a city now but it was a town then. And it was really, really hard. As a 15 year old girl, I wasn't even 16 at the time, sleeping rough somewhere like that I was kicked and punched and spat at more times than I care to remember and it felt incredibly dehumanizing I'd sleep in the porch of a derelict church I'd sleep in shop doorways sometimes derelict buildings anywhere where I could get my head down and it was the hardest period of my life without a shadow of doubt and I sold The Big Issue.

4:39For those that aren't familiar with The Big Issue it's a street magazine that people buy for cost price and sell on for a profit and that gave me some kind of structure amongst what felt like a very chaotic experience but it was hard. For those that don't know Newport it's somewhere that at the time was very high in drugs, high in crime, high in deprivation, low in opportunities. It was a very volatile place. And I thank God every day that I came through it without too much of a scathe. I mean, how scary for all of you, you in particular, but also your mother, not knowing maybe where you were did she know you were sleeping rough on the streets aged 15 did you have contact with her it was on and off we did and I her mental health was really suffering at the time anyway so when I look back I can imagine that that had only compounded it but when the situation feels as volatile as it did back then if the better alternative is sleeping rough you can imagine how difficult the alternative would have been.

5:56Nobody chooses to sleep rough if they have an alternative. So you solved the big issue. You were two years homeless. What would you say to people about homelessness, which is on the increase? And of course, we managed to deal with it during COVID, but there are a lot of people, again, sleeping rough. I passed one just now as I came out of Leicester Square tube station, where you often see somebody in a sleeping bag. What would you say about the condition of homelessness and how society treats the homeless? In my experience, it can be incredibly isolating. No one ends up homeless if they have an alternative.

6:38If you have a social support network around you, you might have other options, but certainly in my case, I didn't. and it can feel so isolating and so lonely and I think that there's still a huge stigma that's associated with homelessness and also people associate homelessness with street homelessness there are many many versions of homelessness that are on the increase including hidden homelessness like people sleeping in their cars sofa surfing people in temporary accommodation and sleeping in hotels the problem is much more prevalent than people might give initial credit to and it's absolutely on the increase as we see the cost of living crisis rise we have more and more problems with trying to get people into accommodation once they're out of accommodation and it is an increasing problem I think for me one of the worst things not just during homelessness but after homelessness that recovery from homelessness was the stigma I found it really difficult to talk about and I know many others that have come through the other side of homelessness have also expressed this same point it can feel hard to talk about what you've been through there's still feelings of shame and isolation that are associated with it and one of the bits of work that I do now with the Prince of Wales' programme called Homewards, which aims to demonstrate it's possible to end homelessness in five years, is looking at how we can reframe the narrative.

8:13How do we change the way that we speak about homelessness? How can we take away that stigma? And make sure people understand that homelessness is an experience, it's not part of an identity. And that means people can move through it better. Well, you certainly have. and aged 18. I think your passion for a career that someone has said allows you to rescue others is you were never rescued yourself, which is an extraordinary way of encapsulating your life, isn't it, Sabrina? You joined the fire service as a teenager. What drew you into it? Oh, do you know what? When I started to get to the point where secure accommodation was a reality, And there were a few false starts.

8:59It's not as easy as just getting a place to stay. I ended up sleeping in a van for a while and back out again. And I had a room in a shared house for a while, but I got attacked by someone else living there and ended up back out again. So you end up with this kind of on and off. But when something secure that I knew I was going to be able to stay in became a reality, that's when I started to think about what else could become a reality. And the fire service appealed to me because I felt like you were trusted by people to know what to do when they're having the worst day that they've ever had. And I felt like I could relate to that after the couple of years that I'd had.

9:38you know when you wake up every morning and you think this is this is the worst um and I think that's why I wanted to do something where I could help people and that's what drew me to the fire service but when I initially started to kind of float the idea people laughed at me and they were like oh you're too small you'll get in the way um and it was tough but I I joined first of all as a retained firefighter so I was part-time and I'd do a range of other jobs a bit of bar work a bit of work here and there and I'd go to incidents I'd have a pager and I'd be on call and you remember those things pages what's the bar work in the fire service oh no working in a pub you did bar work on the side I thought that's right that's like a vision of a workplace butter no no no I worked in a bar part time and then you had a pager and you're on call and you'd because people will But you should be thinking right now, you know, obviously you are slight.

10:34You are five foot four. I wish. One. I've got heels on. And so they have this vision of the firefighters, of men who put up ladders, who scale ladders and they go into children's bedrooms. Or they get, you know, little old ladies out and they sling them over their shoulders and they come down ladders. That couldn't have been you, but you were in the fire service anyway since the age of 18. Absolutely. But a woman can make a career within that sort of environment. Absolutely. I mean, ultimately, we work as a team. And in any team, you need variety. There'd be absolutely no point in me having a toolbox full of 10 mil spanners because that's only going to deal with one kind of problem.

11:17So I might not be the first person that would be given a sledgehammer to go and knock down a door, but I'd be the first person that would be sent through the hole that would be made so that I could get in there. Same with road traffic collisions. I could reach places that other people necessarily couldn't. But there is still an element of physicality to the fire service and there's no getting away from that. But we work as a team. We never sling anyone over our shoulder. Firstly, they'd knock their head on the cylinder that we have. But we work as a team and we carry people out together. And I've carried out dozens of people, far bigger than I, with a colleague when we're carrying them out of a burning building.

11:52Plus, if you sling them over your shoulder, they're probably going to suffocate because all of the oxygen is at the bottom. Not at the top. I'm so glad you're here to put me right on these important points of fire rescue. Sabrina, what kind of prejudices did you confront from the beginning when you joined the fire service? I've been really honest about my journey in fire. After I was a retained firefighter, I was successful in a whole time campaign and I got in as a whole time firefighter, as a career firefighter. So that's when your day job is firefighting. and at the early days when I was a firefighter there I was woman number seven in a workforce of 1700 guys nationally only one percent of operational firefighters were women when I first joined and we've come a long long way since then but I've been very open in the sense that when I first joined I'd experienced some significant discrimination from colleagues I was told that things had to be different for me because I wasn't a guy things happened to me that I absolutely should have challenged at the time and you didn't know I look back and I think why didn't I and I was young and I felt insecure and I felt like that balance of power was against me you were also totally outnumbered yes and all the male bosses I presume and your superiors in the service were all were met obviously were male your male bosses were male sorry I'm repeating myself I have no doubt that they would have dealt with it but at the time my worry was if I raise this what will my peers think of me and I had that real anxiety and you don't have to be a woman in a male-dominated environment to relate to that everybody has been in a situation where they feel like they don't have a voice amongst other people that they're with they feel like they're lower than or less than and it was it was difficult but what I would say is things have moved on significantly since and I don't recognize the fire service today to the one that I joined back then.

13:51We've still got work to do. I'll be really clear. We have work to do, but it is nothing like it was in 2001 when I first joined as a firefighter.

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14:47you've risen through the ranks i mean you've had a meteoric career in the fire service uh you are chief of hampshire and the isle of white your chief fire officer officer and you've written this book the heat of the moment about the the fact that you were drawn into the making these decisions are in the heat of the moment split second decisions which would either save or cost lives resting on you. Do you think there's anything to be said? Have you reached any conclusions after this distinguished career? I mean, you're still a young woman. You're only in your 40s. About how women and how men take these split-second decisions?

15:33It's a really good question. And I've been fortunate to be in a position to study this for some time. I did a PhD in behavioral neuroscience and I co-supervised a small research team at Cardiff University where we look specifically at how we make decisions under pressure. And one of the things that was really apparent is that when we make those urgent split second decisions, we can be very much in the here and now. And we rely very much on the biases that we have to act as shortcuts. so we're not necessarily weighing up all of the possible options and choosing the best possible one we're responding to something in that environment and so we've developed a range of techniques that are now used all across the UK in fire and rescue services to help firefighters make better decisions under pressure that really encapsulates the benefits of those split second decisions those biases that your brains use as shortcuts to make the best decisions that you can under the circumstances.

16:35Can you give a concrete example of a scenario in which the research that you've done into decision making could actually inform the decision? Yeah, of course. So we train firefighters now to use something called decision controls. So when you make a decision, you can't change whether you're going to make it very analytically and weigh up all the different options or to make it as a gut decision using those biases. It depends on too many factors. so rather than trying to change that we thought we'd go with the brain power we'd go with the way that we're all hardwired and find a way to really kind of harness that so now we train people so when they make a decision but before they action it they have to go through a very rapid mental checklist where they ask themselves three questions what's my goal and that might sound really simple but when you're making a gut decision you're not always linking it to stuff and we found when we did the research that when you're using that we found up to 35 percent more goal-directed decision making so it's more focused so what's my goal and the second one is what do i expect to happen and i know that sounds really simple but the reality is when you're making a gut decision you're based in the here and now you're not thinking ahead and so that pushes people to think ahead and think about the ramifications of the decisions it's like a primer and again we found up to five times more of the highest level of situation awareness when people are using that decision control and then the third one is how does the benefit outweigh the risk because again when you're making a gut decision you're not necessarily tying it to anything rational or logical it's a response that's been tied to something else that you've experienced in the past so tying yourself to that rationale means that people are more likely to go through it so what's my goal what do i expect to happen and how does the benefit outweigh the risk and it doesn't slow down decision making either we tested this and there was no difference in time from when someone needed to make a decision to taking action when they were using the decision controls it's been very successful i see and every situation is different every fire is different every emergency is different but if you apply those three tests to each situation it doesn't delay the response but it can improve the response.

18:55Absolutely. And you can use it in your everyday life. I tell you, it's saved me a few times when I've gone to the fridge to reach for a piece of chocolate cake. What's my goal? Well, it's not to eat a piece of chocolate cake. What's the outcome? I will put somewhere. So let's take the reader to some of the dramatic incidents that you've either attended or been part of the response. the Grenfell is one that was very close to where I am and I remember walking past Grenfell in the morning after that night in July that very hot night and seeing the female fire chief making a statement to the press I don't think it was you no Danny Cotton it was Danny Cotton and but you know I remember thinking that the head of the Met was a female the head of the fire service in London was a female.

19:47I'm thinking, as I also, of course, was kind of taking on board the utter tragedy of this event, you know, 72 or 74 people lost their lives. What do you have to say about Grenfell now and how the fire service responded to it? Do you know, it was one of the most harrowing incidents that I think any of us had experienced and I went as I was in charge of the scene for a few days after the initial fire when we were still dealing with the body recovery phase so I wasn't there on the night my role was more later I did run our welfare centre on the morning and as the firefighters were coming off the scene I was debriefing them and making sure that they were supported and they had access to a counsellor and I heard some real brave stories that night and so I think you have to separate two things here I think you have to separate the fire service which was explored in depth at the inquiry and you have to separate that from the firefighters and the people who gave their absolute all on a night that was completely unprecedented completely unprecedented and I think it's fair to say that after that night it felt like London would never be the same again because no one thought that something like that could happen here it was an incident that affected an entire community and it's really important that we learn from that really important across a wide range of sectors yeah i mean there's we don't need to go into the whole inquiry ground full inquiry it's cost absolutely billions it cost lives most importantly i remember seeing the firefighters that day they were slumped you know blackened they were just lines and lines of them with their sort of helmets off just like completely zoned out completely zoned out i didn't think they'd ever experienced anything like it nothing in the rule book can prepare firefighters for that kind of day so it must be a very anxious making career to go into not knowing when you wake up every morning what you're going to be dealing with how resilient do you have to be i think it's important to be resilient in any frontline service you have to have an element of resilience but also not to turn off the empathy because we do the job that we do to help people so still being able to connect and understand other people's pain and fears and anxiety is a really important aspect of our role but I think sometimes when we go to incidents sometimes it's the ones that aren't the big ones that necessarily will have an echo that relate to us in some way that we can feel and there was an incident that I went to which was actually the driver for the research where another firefighter had been burned and I thought at the time it was my husband-to-be we were called to an incident that was an exploding pavement and explosions and pavements don't tend to go together.

23:18But a firefighter had been burned there. Now, as it transpires, there was an underground electrical junction box that had a fault in it and it had exploded and it had burned a colleague of ours. My husband, thankfully, wasn't hurt. But he was very nearly killed. He'd been poking around with his head in this pit wondering what on earth this exploding pavement was. Now, there was a real point to that. that incident played on my mind more than any other. And it played on my mind because I kept thinking about what could have happened if it wasn't him, what might have been if it was seconds earlier.

23:56And that incident changed the way that I saw my version of forever. I had to recalibrate what that meant to me because it could have been very, very different. And it was actually that incident that drove me to go and do the research because I wanted to understand how we could make decisions better to try and keep people safer. Do you think there's something different about firefighters than other frontline service personnel that makes them want to go into the critically dangerous situation and try and save life? I think anyone working on the frontline has a similar version of wanting to be able to help.

24:35You might just angle your skills in a slightly different way. So as an A &E doctor let's say or I'm trying to think of another one, a police officer. Absolutely. Who actually patrols the streets. Absolutely. Try and keeps them safe. Yeah, absolutely and I think that all of us have that one theme in common that we want to help and we put helping others over and above ourselves.

25:03And your husband didn't wasn't injured. Thankfully not but it kind of altered your perspective on the day-to-day because he could have been and then you would have altered the course of your life yeah um so you're both in the far service your your daughter must sometimes think what did i do to deserve this or not sorry i don't mean to put it like that i'm sure she's very proud of you i don't know how old she is but 16 she's 16 yeah um are you you know you're not frontline now you're a fire boss is he still frontline he's a station commander so he runs the fire station so he still goes out often in his car to emergencies and he'll be in in charge of the scene it must be i was thinking because of course cram montana we've had and then we've 9-11 the twin towers and the fire service has been you know they are front and center of of some of the worst disasters that have taken place in modern times how re-traumatizing is it to be in the fire service after an incident such as took place in Cran Montana which looked and we don't know yet we haven't we haven't found out but I mean what what was your reaction when you saw that did you did you sort of analyze it or did you have a fire boss's reaction to it what what was your train of thought i think whenever you see an incident whether in the uk or abroad you're always looking at it through the lens of the fire and rescue service what are the dangers how could it be prevented that's the key yeah what can we do differently now we know this and I think that that's a really important factor of what we do in all frontline services actually it's not just the incident that's happened and dealing with the aftermath of that it's the what comes next it's the how do we stop this happening it's another version of that same drive and desire to save people except this time the ones that get saved and protected didn't know they might have ever needed it because they never have to experience that in the first place.

27:22Did you ever answer my question when I said do men and women take split second decisions differently? When we were doing the research we didn't have enough of a gender split to be able to analyse whether that was there was anything significant. I think I'm not sure. No, I don't think so. Not those split second decisions. What it would drive is people's experiences that might inform the shortcuts that you have. But I don't think under pressure there is any data that I've seen that would indicate that there's a difference between men and women. Do you think there's, this sounds completely crazy, but I mean, I've interviewed war reporters and war correspondents, female and male, and they get an adrenaline fix from being on the front line and they miss it.

28:20Do you think that for firefighters that there is a kind of adrenaline fix to attending a fire and that's part of the driver of wanting to be a firefighter? It's a really good question, actually. And I think it very much depends on the individual. I think that all of us, when we start in the fire service, we're really focused on what we can do to help. And people have often said, you know, are you is it scary when you're going into a situation like that? I would imagine it is. Is it fear that drives you? And you're always aware there's a real alertness. But the training that you have and the drive to get in there and help, for me, is the overriding factor.

29:02So I don't think it's an adrenaline rush as in this is really exciting. But there is certainly a driver that pushes you to do something that you deeply, deeply want to do to try to help. But also it's life and death and it must mean that the people who are attending the scene must be feeling almost more alive than that's the most alive part of their day. Do you know, I'm not sure. I'm just I'm just projecting. I'm just trying to imagine being on court, waiting around in the fire station, maybe, or being told there's something. And that is what you're living for. That is your job. Yeah, I think it's more what I've experienced on a fire ground is a real focus.

29:51So it's not it's not so much you come alive and it's the adrenaline thing because there's a real focus and a real discipline. We train really hard because we know what the risks are. So I think it's more really kind of deep, intense focus to do the right things in the right order to get the right outcomes to get people out of that dangerous situation.

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31:01Could you have married someone who wasn't a firefighter? Obviously not, because it's my husband and only my husband. No, but I mean, is it such a particular way of life and thinking and being that if you're going to be able to sort of like share the household, co-parent, you need to be on the same page? I think it I mean I think for me it's helped because we both understand the the environment we understand what our every day is like and you can just kind of you know dump and go this has happened and this has happened and and you understand it so I think it does help but also you know I I know others in the service whose partners do something completely different and there's a real joy in that as well because you you don't have to take your work home with you So let's move on to your newest book, which is about gender bias, barriers that hold women back and how to break them.

31:59I mean, who better than to write a book than the first female fire chief boss who entered an almost entirely male profession that's now has changed. What are the general what are your general observations about gender bias still in 2026? Do you know, it's so easy when I talk about my job to just focus on the gender biases that you might experience in work. My observation is that gender bias is such a pervasive quality that it's something that affects all of society. I've definitely had stranger reactions from those outside of the fire service than those inside of the fire service. Can you give an example?

32:43Yeah. So my husband and I were at a dinner party and we were chatting to a couple and it was people that we vaguely knew from the school gates, but didn't really know them. So we're having a lovely chat. Anyway, they said, what do you do? So my husband said, I'm a firefighter. And they went, oh, that's amazing. Wow. You must be so brave. Tell us about some things that you've seen. So he kind of, he's a very modest guy, my husband. So he kind of got a bit embarrassed and went, yeah, so is my wife, actually. In fact, she's not just a firefighter. She's my boss. Well, not just my boss. She's my boss's boss's boss's boss, actually.

33:19And they kind of looked at me like I had two heads. They're like, you? And I was like, yeah, hi. And they said, but you don't look like a firefighter. And then they turned around and said, hang on, isn't it a bit dangerous? Haven't you got a kid? You've got a daughter, haven't you? Why would you do that when you've got a child? And my husband kind of like grabbed me and said, you know, let's go and refresh our glasses because he could see my mouth opening and he knew that I wouldn't be able to take back what I was about to say. What would you have said? Go on. I think that I would have been quite direct in my response because I was very frustrated.

33:53That's the most sexist response sheet they could have come up with in that situation. Awful. Yeah, it was appalling. But there's a reality to this that society, not just them, because they didn't mean it in an abusive or an offensive way. That was just their ingrained reflex. As a society, we don't expect women to take risks in the same way that men do. And therefore, when we see a woman taking what we perceive to be a risk, people can respond very negatively in a way that they never would with a man. And my husband has never had that response. No one's ever said, aren't you a father? As soon as he said what he does for a job.

34:33So, you know, it's interesting. And there's some really fascinating research about this. There was a lovely study that was looking at children, preschoolers, who were engaging in risky play. And they were kids playing on a fire pole, ironically enough. And they were looking at how their parents responded to them. And when the little boys wanted to go and play on this fire pole, they would be encouraged. and if they showed any kind of trepidation, the parents would kind of guide them to do it independently. Say, come on, you can do it. You're brave. Come on, you've got this. Big boy. Yeah. If the little girls wanted to do it, the parents interjected spontaneously significantly more than with the little boys.

35:12They would say, hang on, wait for me. Wait for me, I'll help you. Now you think about the messages that get internalised and for boys it's you're independent. You can do this. You don't need anyone. Come on, you're brave. And for the little girls, you need help. You can't do it alone. Fast forward to the world of work. And I don't know if you're familiar with the Hewlett-Packard study, but it looked at men and women who were applying for a job. And on average, men will apply for a job if they meet about 60 percent of the job criteria. But women have to be 100 percent, tick every box. Exactly that.

35:49So you can really see how it affects us throughout our life, our life chances, our economic success and the way that we might respond to another woman. Yeah, I mean, I thought nothing about what you say surprises me because I remember when that woman climbed Everest who had two children and she died. Alison Hargreaves. Alison Hargreaves and she lost her life and everyone said how irresponsible she was to have climbed Everest because she was a mother. Yeah. We have not. I mean, has has the world moved on at all? Slowly. I mean, that incident was in 1995. And I can remember seeing that. I must have been about 12 at the time.

36:28And I was quite surprised at the reaction because I saw that she'd climbed Everest and I was like, wow, what a woman. And so to see the media response, it was really disappointing. But, you know, you kind of fast forward and you take Serena Williams, for example, wearing her catsuit in, was it 2020 at Wimbledon? And she was postpartum and the catsuit she was wearing because it was helping her with her blood circulation after having her child. And that was all anyone focused on was this catsuit that she was wearing. She's this incredible athlete. all of the sporting accolades she has and people are more interested in what she's wearing or her weight or her weight or her postpartum figure it's infuriating but there's a there's a there's a reality to this because it's easy to beat ourselves up and everybody has unconscious biases everybody does because we absorb the messages that we experience all around us and our brain files them away in things that are similar so it's no wonder we all have inbuilt stereotypes and biases and biases there was a really really telling study that was done that was using something called the implicit association test which essentially calculates your unconscious biases sees how how closely correlated you you put certain categories together and they were looking at unconscious biases linked with women and men and leadership and support roles.