The overarching mission of the rescue services comprises three main areas of responsibility: protection against disasters and accidents; crisis management; and civil defence. This mission covers a long chain of obligations in trying to improve societal prevention capabilities and manage threats, risks, accidents, and disasters concerning generic as well as individual safety. It follows a reactive social chain of threat-risk-crisis-crisis management-care-rehabilitation.

The authors in this book show that the interesting occupational characteristics of these societal duties are their connection to gender and crisis management in a wider sense. Gendered practices, processes, identities, and symbols are analytical lenses that provide a particular understanding and explanatory base that has received far too little attention in the academic literature. This book identifies four major themes in relation to a gendered understanding of the rescue services, and more generally emergency work:

This book shows how the rescue services constitute a productive ground for contemporary gender studies, including feminist theory, masculinity and sexuality studies. Its critical perspective provides new directions for emergency work and crisis management in a broader sense, and in particular for scholars and practitioners in these areas.