Half of next year's intake of firefighters will be women, in a landmark move to combat female under-representation in the territory's emergency services.

ACT Fire & Rescue plans to recruit 16 new firefighters, eight of them women, in February.

As it stands, less than 2 per cent of firefighters in the ACT are women.

Across the entire ACT Emergency Services Agency, female representation is 30 per cent.

Emergency Services Minister Joy Burch said the move demonstrates how the emergency services agency wants to more accurately "reflect the community".

"It's important that we support the women in our community to follow their dreams and to join fire and rescue if that's what they want to do," Ms Burch said.

ACT Fire & Rescue Commissioner Dominic Lane said fire stations across the ACT, including volunteer stations, will receive upgrades to accommodate more women.

"We have a very low representation of women in emergency services. This particular campaign is about increasing the number of women so that we can become a more capable fire and rescue service," Mr Lane said.

"All fire and rescue services nationally have been looking at ways of increasing the number of women in their services. We've taken the unprecedented step of seeking permission from the commissioner for public administration to set a specific target of 50 per cent women.

"You'll need to be fit, you'll need to have a good aerobic capacity, you'll need to work on your strength, in particular your upper body strength. We know there are women out there who'll meet our stringent fitness standards and we encourage them to get involved and train to get ready for recruitment."

Chief officer Mark Brown said the campaign is geared to get more women interested in applying.

"Many women don't see firefighting as a traditional career, where they might be happy to apply for police or ambulance or the military, we've had very low numbers of women applying," Mr Brown said.

"It's often thought that women fail the physical aptitude test but that's not true, they fail other parts of the test in about the same proportion as men. The problem we've had is that we've had so few female applicants. We want to increase that number."

The new quota has been welcomed by ACT Fire & Rescue's first female station officer, Gina Kikos.

When Ms Kikos began her career as a firefighter 24 years ago, she was one of only three female firefighters in service.

The former public servant said the biggest barrier for many women getting involved is attitude.

"I think in the past a lot of the posters and images in the media were always men. A picture tells a thousand words and if someone looks at a picture and sees women then they're more likely to think they're able to do it," Ms Kikos said.

"I think a lot of them [are intimidated], they think I'm not strong enough, I have noodle arms. It isn't for everyone, we're not saying every woman can do this job. There is a lot of work to train for it so you've really got to want to do it."

To find out more, check out the careers section on the ESA website.