Female Firefighters Still Face Obstacles : Women: Tough strength test and sexism cited among key barriers.

In the 1986 TV movie “Firefighter,” the first woman to join the Los Angeles County Fire Department blazes a gender-bending trail meant to light a fire under prospective female recruits.

Even though in real life the subject of the film faced hazing that included a sanitary napkin dispenser being thrown at her feet (to which she responded, “That’s not my brand,” before stalking out), Cindy Barbee hoped her 1983 breakthrough would encourage other women to storm the firehouses.

But 11 years later, any sequel to the TV movie about Barbee would be too downbeat to be made. Out of 2,400 county firefighters, only 11--less than 1%--are women, one of whom is undergoing a sex-change operation to become a man.

And, to the chagrin of county officials, a federal judge recently overturned the Fire Department’s most notable attempt to be sensitive to its female employees: a ban on Playboy magazine and other sexually explicit magazines in firehouses.

The court found that the ban violated constitutional guarantees of free speech and press. The county is appealing the order, which specifically permits “the quiet reading” of Playboy, but some female firefighters fear that a second court defeat would strengthen the male mandate in the department by permitting all skin magazines in the stations, including hard-core pornography.

Dismal as the county’s record of hiring female firefighters sounds, the national picture is not that much brighter. Since the first woman became a full-time firefighter 20 years ago in Arlington County, Va., only 4,000 women have joined the ranks. They now comprise less than 2% of the 250,000 paid firefighters nationwide.

“It’s still a men’s club, or, as I like to call it, a boys’ club, because some of them aren’t that mature,” said Barbee, who is 38.

It pays to be a member of that club, at least on the West Coast. County firefighters earn at least $35,000 a year for working 10 round-the-clock shifts per month, an annual salary that increases with seniority, promotions and overtime. Last year, Barbee earned $89,000.

Despite the allure of the money, few women succeed at getting hired because they lack the upper-body strength to pass entrance exams that include dragging bulky hoses and lifting heavy ladders. Fewer women than men apply in the first place, and, when they do, their failure rate is much higher. In the county’s last physical exam for the firefighter trainee program, for instance, almost half of the hundreds of male applicants passed, while only six women--or 20% of the 36 who tried--made it.

Firefighting is one of the few professions where technology has not necessarily made the job less taxing.

Despite the introduction of some automated equipment, firefighters today need to be stronger than ever because the modern gear they wear is actually heavier--including oxygen tanks that resemble scuba equipment and weigh nearly 40 pounds. But just how much strength is necessary to do the job and whether mandatory physical entrance exams are designed fairly are central questions in the debate over how to bring more women into the fire service.

“No one agrees on how much strength you need and how you measure it,” said Terese Floren, executive director of Women in Fire Service, an international trade association. “Every citizen who pays taxes has a right to expect firefighters who are competent to do the job. The question is how strong is strong enough? If you (overemphasize) one aspect, you’re going to miss out on others, like teamwork and intelligence.”

There are other advantages to hiring women. In San Diego, where women comprise a whopping 8% of the Fire Department--among the highest in the nation--a spokesman said women have improved life in the firehouse for everyone. For instance, women are responsible for the fact that most modern fire stations have semi-private sleeping areas instead of large, communal dormitories, said San Diego Capt. Bob Zepeda.

Several major departments have managed to hire a larger percentage of women than Los Angeles County, largely because they have changed their physical tests and training programs, prompted in some cases by affirmative action lawsuits.

The city of Los Angeles, for instance, which was under a federal consent decree in the mid-1970s to increase the number of minorities in its Fire Department, eventually started actively recruiting women to avoid being sued, officials said.

The city has 53 female firefighters--2% of the force--many of whom participated in a special training program run by the department for women to get them in shape for the physical test. But a spokesman said the department may soon eliminate the 10-week program or find private funding to pay the $45,000-per-session cost, because of fear of a lawsuit by male firefighters who have formally complained that it is discriminatory to spend public dollars to train only one gender.

In contrast, Los Angeles County has never made a special effort to train women to take the test. Officials say the county cannot afford to provide such programs.

The handful of female county firefighters who agreed to be interviewed said they support more aggressive efforts to recruit women, but oppose offering them special training programs or making the physical test easier because they believe strength is an important qualification.

Capt. Deborah Lawrence, the highest-ranking woman in the county Fire Department, said she had no trouble passing the physical test on her own seven years ago when she decided to switch from nursing to firefighting.

“You don’t have to be superhuman,” said Lawrence, who is a muscular 5 feet, 7 1/2 inches tall and weighs 135 pounds. “Women can do it if they get in shape, but you have to want it, you have to commit yourself to training hard, and you have to do it for the rest of your life.”

Lawrence, 38, said her upbringing probably helped her succeed. Lawrence’s parents treated her and her three younger brothers equally, she said.

“I went to auto shop and they learned to bake and vacuum,” Lawrence said. “Growing up in a male environment, a lot of things that might tend to bother someone else don’t bother me. Like when a guy comes in (to the department), it takes two or three weeks to be accepted. When a woman comes in, it takes two to three months.”

Physical weakness is not the only reason women have not broken into the fire service in great numbers, firefighters say. Even strong women may be deterred by the lack of privacy in older stations that have communal dormitories and bathrooms, by grooming standards that until recently called for military-style men’s haircuts for women and by the sometimes-hostile working environment.

“You’re definitely working in a fishbowl, and there are people that want to see you fail,” said Janet Babcock, 31, the third woman to join the county Fire Department. “I’ve seen guys drop ladders, but no one talks about that. You hear about it if you’re a girl.”

Male and female firefighters agreed that the days are long gone when sexist incidents were common, like the one in which a fire captain threw a sanitary napkin dispenser at Barbee’s feet in a fit of pique shortly after she joined the department. “The way things are now, if you get out of line, there’s a lawyer waiting in the wings,” said Los Angeles County Firefighter Rick Ortiz, 41, who occasionally works with Barbee.

Babcock said she has experienced less overt sexism working for the county than working on seasonal fire crews, where she was frequently the target of practical jokes in the mid-1980s.

“A lot of guys got pies thrown in their face, but as the only woman I got it so often I had to change clothes three or four times a day,” Babcock said. Her tenure in the county Fire Department has not been entirely incident-free, though, she said, refusing to elaborate. “If you’re sensitive, the department is definitely not the place to be.”

News reports about sexism in the firehouses have not helped in the effort to encourage women to apply, said Lt. Rochelle “Rocky” Jones, one of 36 women on the New York City Fire Department’s 11,234-member force.

“Women who are physically fit hear all these kinds of problems and then look at the (Police Department) and say, ‘Do I want to go to a place where there are 35 women or 3,000?’ ” Jones said.

Women police officers outnumber female firefighters because the work is less physically demanding and because women first entered the law enforcement ranks more than 20 years before they entered the fire service, said Floren, with Women in Fire Service. Women police officers accounted for 9% of the nation’s total force of 554,309 in 1992, according to FBI statistics.

For years, women firefighters were required to conform to masculine grooming standards, long after police departments had changed their policies. Tired of being mistaken for men because of their butch haircuts, Barbee and Inspector Jerilynn Haertsch enlisted the union in their effort to persuade Los Angeles County to modify its standards. In 1990, seven years after Barbee joined, the department began allowing women to wear their hair long, provided it is kept off their collars.

“It was just a way to keep women out,” Barbee said. “It would have been like requiring male nurses to wear skirts and bonnets because that’s how nurses traditionally look.”

But Capt. Steve Valenzuela, the department’s head spokesman, said long hair was considered a safety hazard until Barbee produced proof that departments in other areas had allowed it without any mishaps.

“The county Fire Department is very traditional,” Valenzuela said. “We tend not to give new things a chance right away.”

Indeed, the department still does not have a women’s locker room in its training academy in East Los Angeles, much to the consternation of female trainees. Unlike men, who have a large room with showers and lockers, female trainees have to scramble down to the basement to use a small restroom equipped with a shower during the brief periods recruits are given to change clothes.

Department officials cited limited financial resources to explain why they have never built a women’s locker room. But a new battalion chief in charge of training has recently pledged to somehow drum up the money to install such a facility.

Barbee and Haertsch also are trying to get the department to force its supplier to make uniforms for women. Right now, female firefighters have to either make do with baggy, ill-fitting uniforms cut for men, make expensive alterations or spend their own money on properly fitting clothes, they said. It’s not a fashion issue, Haertsch says. For instance, the protective jackets known as turnout coats are cut too narrowly to fit over some of the women’s hips, posing a potential hazard during fires by not fully covering their bodies, she said.

But ill-fitting uniforms, masculine haircuts and unequal facilities pale by comparison to the physical test as deterrents for female firefighter hopefuls.

Like night and day, San Diego and New York illustrate how differences in those physical tests affect the composition of a fire department.

In New York City, applicants are ranked primarily according to how fast they complete events like climbing stairs while wearing a breathing apparatus and other heavy gear. Men beat women in most events, so they are hired first. The department hired its first woman in 12 years earlier this summer.

To get women in shape for the New York test, female members of the department recently helped raise $75,000 from private sources for a pre-training fitness program. “Hopefully, it will work,” said Firefighter Jones.

At the other end of the spectrum, San Diego changed its physical test in 1977 in response to an affirmative action lawsuit filed by a group of Latinos, African Americans and women, who claimed the exam was not job-related. Among other things, the department abolished height and weight requirements, and eliminated such events as having to lift a ladder overhead five times consecutively, Zepeda said.

“There has been absolutely no decline in our safety record or the quality of our applicants,” Chief Robert Osby said.

Both Los Angeles county and city fire departments offer pass/fail tests that officials said are virtually the same. Applicants who pass the county’s physical test then are ranked according to how they score in an oral interview. Top scorers who meet the department’s affirmative action needs, including women, are generally given first crack at the training academy, known as the “drill tower.”

Another factor that may have made a difference to potential female applicants considering the two departments is the difference in the longevity of their sexual harassment policies regarding sexually explicit magazines, calendars and skin flicks. The city Fire Department has forbidden such materials, including Playboy, for the past six years, four years longer than the county, said Los Angeles Fire Department Battalion Chief Bob Teachenor, and will continue to do so pending the outcome of the county’s appeal.

The county decided to impose the ban after fire officials noticed pornographic magazines lying around the stations in public view and got worried about sexual harassment suits, they said.

Yet even the women in the county Fire Department are split on the issue: Two sided with the male firefighter who sued to overturn the ban, saying Playboy did not offend them; two supported the ban. (The rest declined to take a public position.) Barbee, who favored the ban, recalled that shortly before it was imposed highly pornographic pictures of women sometimes appeared in station restrooms and recreation areas.

“It makes it hard to be viewed as an equal,” she said. “If they come back, it’ll be up to the station supervisor to make sure they’re read privately.”

In 11 years, she has only worked once with another woman, and even then for only half a day. Yet she retains her enthusiasm for the job she worked so hard to get. “It would be nice to have more women on the department. Despite everything, this is a great job.”

Women on the Fire Lines

Twenty years ago, a woman in Arlington County, Va., became the first female, full-time, paid firefighter in American history. Today, the fire service is still a male-dominated occupation.

Location no. of women out of total % of women Nationwide 4,000 out of 250,000 1.6% L.A. County 11 out of 2,400 less than 1% L.A. city 53 out of 2,700 about 2% San Diego 71 out of 851 about 8% San Francisco 73 out of 1,459 5% New York 36 out of 11,234 less than 1%

Sources: Fire Depts., Women in Fire Service