Turning the Tide : Female lifeguards have gained a foothold in the male-dominated profession. But they still battle sexism--sometimes even from swimmers they are trying to help.

After 16 years on the job, Sharon Law still faces daily reminders that she is not only a lifeguard--but a female lifeguard.

When she takes a shower after work, the Los Angeles County lifeguard tapes a handwritten sign on the locker room door saying “female inside.” To fit into the shorts issued by the county this year, she had to cut out the lining designed for men.

And when she responds to a call for help, the Manhattan Beach mother of two sometimes finds it is coming from a male swimmer who then refuses to be rescued by a woman, preferring instead to struggle to shore alone.

“The lifeguard service is a men’s club--it is, was and always will be,” said Law, 34. “When I first started, I wanted to be one of the men, but I’ve come to the conclusion I’ll never be a fully initiated member.”

It has been nearly 20 years since Los Angeles County’s first female lifeguard took to the beach. With the help of changes in the county’s hiring policy, women have come to fill 62 of the county’s seasonal lifeguard positions and three of the hard-to-get 112 full-time posts.

In interviews, female lifeguards say that, despite the well-intentioned equal opportunity efforts, it has been tough gaining a foothold in the traditionally male-dominated profession. But they also display a dogged determination to prove that they can do anything their male counterparts can do--and sometimes more.

“In the last five years, I’ve begun to feel I don’t need to continually prove myself,” said Law. “But it took 10 years to build that reputation. A man can probably do it, if he’s good, in two or three years.”

Before 1973, no woman had worked as an ocean lifeguard in Los Angeles County. But that year, two women plunged into the profession: Kai Nowell, who was hired by the now-defunct Los Angeles City lifeguard service, and Wendy Paskin, who was hired by the county department.

Paskin was a competitive swimmer training for the 1976 Olympics when she decided, on a lark, to enter the 1,000-meter ocean swim required of would-be lifeguards.

She made waves when she placed midway among the top 50 finishers, qualifying her for an endurance-testing two-week training program known as rookie school.

“All of a sudden, cameras were down there and the chief was pacing back and forth,” said Paskin, an investment banker engaged to San Francisco Mayor Frank M. Jordan. “A lot of the guys I swam with were (saying): ‘This is great. Now what are they going to do?’ ”

Department officials gave Paskin a spot in rookie school. And although many thought she would eventually jump ship, she stuck it out and earned a spot on the beach as a summertime lifeguard. Among the tests the 5-foot-6, 130-pound woman had to pass: pulling a 200-pound man out of the water.

By the end of Paskin’s first summer, male lifeguards who had opposed her entry into the profession began having a change of heart, among them Greg Allen, her supervisor at the time.

The consensus was that the lifeguards were opposed to women in lifeguard positions, Allen said. “Beach lifeguarding isn’t just spotting a rescue. . . . We’ve got to break up fights, handle family disputes. We just thought a woman does not really exude the stature that a man does.”

But “she proved herself the first summer. She was a great female to start things off with.”

Buoyed by Paskin’s example, other women soon followed. In 1984, 11 years after Paskin’s groundbreaking entrance into lifeguarding, Law became the first woman in the county to be promoted to one of the highly coveted year-round posts.

Once again, Allen and other male lifeguards balked. At a party to celebrate the promotion, Allen recalls telling Law point-blank that he believed a woman “had no business being a lifeguard.”

“I was thinking it would have been tough for me at the time, thinking that it’s a man’s profession, to take orders from a woman,” Allen said. “But now I don’t think that. I’ve seen Sharon supervising people and the men accept (her) . . . so I was wrong again.”

Early objections to female lifeguards now seem silly.

Because everything weighs less in the water, including struggling swimmers, women are hardly at a disadvantage on rescues.

At 5 feet, 7 inches and 150 pounds, Law can accomplish physical feats that would make many men squirm. Two weekends ago, when Manhattan Beach was struck by some of its strongest riptides in recent history, she saved 20 people. At one point, she swam ashore towing five people on her rescue float.

A visit to Law’s Manhattan Beach post last week caught her in action.

Scanning the shore from her station, she suddenly noticed three teen-age girls in T-shirts struggling against a riptide. She drove her truck to the water’s edge, plunged into the surf and helped the girls back to shore.

“To me, a lifeguard is a lifeguard, as long as she saves my butt,” one of the girls, 17-year-old Robin Bates of Redondo Beach, said after the rescue.

Even if lifeguards are overwhelmed, their stations are so close together that they always have a backup.

Nor are women worse off than men in other aspects of lifeguarding, spotting swimmers in trouble or helping locate a lost child’s parents, for example. Said Diane Graner, a seasonal lifeguard: “It’s a job you don’t have to have male hormones to do.”

In 1988, the county changed its qualifying standards to encourage more women and minorities to seek jobs in lifeguarding.

Previously, only the top 30 to 50 finishers in a 1,000-meter ocean swim could become candidates for the training program. But the new standards, which gave oral interviews to the top 100 swimmers, allowed lifeguard officials to tap into a larger pool of candidates.

Although county officials insist that there is no quota system, a woman who finishes 60th in the ocean swim is more likely to be picked for the training program than a white male who places 40th, Capt. Robert Buchanan said.

“We want to provide opportunity to people who had done well in the 1,000-meter swim and passed their oral interview (who) weren’t just white males,” Buchanan said.

As a result of affirmative action, more women--and minorities--are in ocean lifeguarding positions than before. Change, however, has been slow in coming.

A couple of summers ago, for instance, county officials recommended a one-piece bathing suit for female lifeguards that turned out to be see-through when wet. And there is no women’s version of the blue uniforms lifeguards wear off the sand.

It was only in the last few years that the county began to provide separate bathrooms and locker facilities for female lifeguards. Although all of the major lifeguard stations have been updated, men and women must share locker space and shower areas in about half a dozen stations along the coast.

Some women complain that the new hiring standards undermine their accomplishments, bringing weaker swimmers into the service and bolstering negative stereotypes among males.

Graner, five-time winner of a 1,000-meter ocean swim in a national competition for female lifeguards, said she was proud to be hired as a lifeguard in 1982 because “I knew I was doing not only what the guys had done, but better.”

But in the last few years since the county began aggressively recruiting women, some male lifeguards have questioned her abilities, she said.

“Now I hear, ‘Oh, you are where you are because you’re a woman,’ ” she said.

In order to get along in their jobs, female lifeguards must often ignore incidents that elsewhere would be considered chauvinist.

They say it isn’t uncommon to hear male colleagues making sexual references about women. And no one complained about an invitation for a department-sponsored party earlier this month that spelled out the word luau in the shape of a woman’s breasts.

Sometimes, the women try to register their objections in a good-natured way. One, who came across a picture of a naked woman on a male colleague’s locker, retaliated by posting a picture of a naked man on her locker.

But often, they overlook the incidents.

“I always felt like I was one of the guys,” seasonal lifeguard Tammy Stoner said. “I don’t want them to stop talking when I show up because they’re afraid I’ll be offended. I’m a lifeguard first and a woman second, and that’s how I want them to treat me.”

Said Graner: “(Male lifeguards) are respectful of us. We all go out and party together. No one gets off-color. On the whole, the lifeguard men are respectful. They treat (us) well.”

It is the men on the sand, not those in the towers, who pose a problem, many women lifeguards say.

“A lot of people speak to your chest as if it could talk back,” Stoner said. “If I had a dollar for every time a guy said, ‘Ohhh, lady lifeguard, would you save me if I drowned?’ I’d be very wealthy.”

Female lifeguards say it is not uncommon for male swimmers, even while struggling in the water, to refuse to accept a rescue float.

“Maybe they have too much pride,” lifeguard Kelly Chrisman suggested.

And some male beach-goers simply refuse to take orders from female lifeguards, sometimes with tragic consequences.

Two summers ago off Marina del Rey, Chrisman was harassed by a Jet Ski rider who would not heed her warnings that he was too close to the surf. After hooting and hollering at her for several minutes, he fell off his ski. Although Chrisman tore into the ocean, the man sank underwater before she could reach him. He drowned.

“I think I bawled for a day,” Chrisman recalled. “I agonized for a long time over how many seconds I took to get to him, and could I have gotten to him faster.”

But despite such discouraging tales, there are abundant signs that female lifeguards are gaining ground. For one, an increasing number of male lifeguards seem to respect the abilities of their female counterparts.

Mike Huwe, 38, a county lifeguard posted in Manhattan Beach, says lost or injured children frequently respond better to female lifeguards.

Also, women can often defuse confrontations on the beach that a male lifeguard might only aggravate, Huwe says. He cited an instance in which a female lifeguard stopped a fight between two female beach-goers after several male lifeguards had failed to break it up.

The lifeguard service itself, Huwe says, has also benefited from the presence of women.

“It’s become more genteel,” Huwe said. “It’s become more service oriented. In the early days, it was very paramilitary . . . but the women have brought about a change in the thinking.”

And many beach visitors feel at least as secure with a woman in the tower.

“I’d rather have her there than a man,” Felicia Mena, a Lawndale mother of three, said from a beach chair last week as she pointed toward Law.

“She pays attention,” she said. “She constantly has her eye on the water. I don’t know if that’s because she’s a female--if it’s because she’s fighting for a position to show that she can do the job. But it does make me feel more safe.”