Within gender studies, research and theorizing have used archetypal ‘masculine’ occupations to explore how masculinity is accomplished and practised in social interaction. In contrast, little work has explored how masculinity is constructed in the voluntary sector. In this paper, we address this gap by exploring how masculinity is constructed and experienced by women volunteers who are active firefighters in rural and regional Victoria. Firefighting is widely recognized as a non‐traditional occupation for women and they are underrepresented as volunteers as well as paid employees. We explore masculinity from the perspective of women volunteers because this can enhance our understanding of masculinity as a relational achievement as well as help to identify practices that they experience as problematic. Our research shows how voluntary work can afford a distinct range of resources for the ‘doing’ of gender and how this reflects the specific organizational and geographical contexts in which such volunteering occurs.

By directly accessing women's accounts of their active and ex-volunteer fire-fighting at the Australian Country Fire Authority (CFA), this paper seeks to understand women's experiences in fire-fighting. The study documents the voices of women in work where they are mostly conspicuous by their absence, thus contributing to the small body of empirical studies of women in fire-fighting. Findings confirm the underrepresentation of women and provide evidence of horizontal and vertical gender segregation. Women fire-fighters are significantly challenged and discriminated against by individual and organisational behaviours. Other findings of this study are the co-existence of hostile and positive job factors for women fire-fighters; and women's tolerance for complexity and paradox. These are scarcely documented in the literature on non-traditional occupations for women, and the paper suggests explanations based on concepts such as agency and coping strategies. Although women fire-fighters at the CFA had only a partial understanding of factors contributing to gender segregation, they voiced a desire and directions for organisational improvement to address gender issues.