A Woman Climbs the Fire Department Ladder : Equality: After some difficult times, the promotion of a female to the rank of captain reflects an era of increased opportunities.

Seven years after the first woman joined the Los Angeles Fire Department, Roxanne V. Bercik is to take charge of a Los Angeles fire station today as the first female in the department’s history to reach the rank of captain.

Bercik, 31, a firefighter since 1984, was among the first women to make it through the department’s rigorous physical ability tests, the traditional stumbling block for women.

Bercik will take charge of one of three shifts at Fire Station 21 in South-Central Los Angeles, overseeing two firefighters, two paramedics and an engineer, all male.

Her ascension punctuates the end of a difficult era in Fire Department history. A decade ago, six male firefighters were suspended in a hazing incident involving one of the first female paramedics, and three years ago some women on the department were still complaining of harassment.

Now, according to department officials, such complaints are virtually nonexistent. Thirty-five of 2,700 firefighters and 42 of 350 paramedics are women. The department has no specific numerical goals for women firefighters, officials said.

At a press conference Monday, Mayor Tom Bradley called Bercik’s promotion a “historic development.” Fire officials initially said she is the first female captain in any major city, but later said there are higher-ranking women firefighters in San Diego and a number of other cities.

Ann Reiss Lane, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners and a longtime backer of efforts to hire female firefighters, said Bercik will be “a role model for so many women who will join the Fire Department.”

Bercik and most of the other female firefighters were the beneficiaries of an affirmative action program that did not lower Fire Department standards but instead helped the women develop the strength to pass the test. The training program helps women where they are weakest--in upper-body strength--and shows them how to work with weights and other devices that mimic the specific actions firefighters most frequently perform.

Although the Board of Fire Commissioners voted in 1975 to actively recruit women, it was not until 1983 and the advent of the special training program that the first handful of women successfully took the tests.

Like other firefighters, Bercik works 10 or 11 24-hour shifts each month. On her days off, she works out at a health club and and rides mountain bikes to maintain her strength.

In order to become a captain, she had to pass a Civil Service examination that is given every two years. Department officials said women are given no special assistance with promotion tests.

Bercik said she has no specific career plans beyond her current promotion. “It’s just a very challenging job and very rewarding profession,” Bercik said Monday. “It’s interesting. Every day is different.”

A native of Chicago, Bercik earned an undergraduate degree in economics at UC Santa Barbara.

She said Monday she had never experienced sexual harassment in the Los Angeles Fire Department and was unaware of the incidents in the past.

In 1984, a former female paramedic won a $75,000 settlement from the city because of a hazing incident six years earlier in which six male firefighters forced her to shave her pubic hair. She alleged in a lawsuit that the men threatened to strip her and shave her unless she did it herself. The men were suspended for two weeks without pay, but all later won reinstatement and were promoted.

In 1988, Fire Chief Donald Manning banned the display of sexually explicit material from all fire stations and offices. The order came in the aftermath of a departmental investigation of a female paramedic’s complaint in 1987 that sexually explicit material was being viewed on television at a station in Westchester.

The investigation uncovered allegations by a female firefighter that she had been sexually harassed by a veteran fireman while on duty. After a lengthy administrative hearing, the fireman was found guilty of slapping the woman on the buttocks and trying to touch her breasts. He was suspended for five months without pay.