The ACT fire service has been trying to recruit more women, but Ms Jones said "all the rhetoric in the world" wouldn't get more women into the fire service "if they can't take a pee or change a tampon".

"I just think it's more of men making the decisions and they are just blindly unaware."

But the Emergency Services Agency did not concede any issues with portaloos on site, saying it was up to on-site controllers whether to call for toilets if they considered them necessary. There had been no complaints about lack of toilets from fire fighters, an agency spokesman said.

The NSW rural fire service provides portaloos on protracted fire fighting jobs, including the recent Carwoola fire near Canberra.

A spokesman said sometimes local council toilets attached to parks or sports fields might be used. At other times portaloos were brought in. Both had been used at the Carwoola fire.

Ms Jones raised the issue in annual reports hearings in the ACT parliament this week, asking Minister for Women Yvette Berry how her "women's action plan" captured such workplace issues.

Ms Jones pointed to the ACT's work health and safety rules which say workplaces must "as far as is reasonably practicable" provide clean, safe and accessible toilet and washing facilities, along with drinking water and eating facilities.

She said she had fielded complaints from male and female fire fighters, with male firefighters keen to have acess to toilets also, and "embarrassed for the women, quite frankly".

"When our fire fighters go out in the field there are no portaloos so women who have got their period have no way of changing a tampon in a seven-hour shift on the fire field."

Ms Jones questioned Ms Berry about whether women were properly consulted in devising the women's action plan. She called for wider consultation with women at different stages of their lives, including those with young children, rather than only hearing ideas from women in decision-making roles, for whom issues such as looking after young children while working, were not always front and centre.

"My concern is we set up these processes to work out what women want, but why aren't we surveying the workplace for a start?"

Ms Berry said the women's action plan was devised with the help of the ministerial advisory council for women, which consulted with wider women's networks. The portaloo issue was "the kind of gender lens that ... the women's advisory committee and the office for women want to see all of the government and all of the government directorates and ministers actually cast over all the directorates' work and activities, including fire fighting," she said, promising to follow up.