Women firefighters in short supply

After City Council President Anna Verna raised questions about the number of women working in the Fire Department at a budget hearing yesterday, Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers pledged to beef up the recruitment effort.

"We are not where we need to be with recruiting women, and we are going to be increasing that effort," Ayers said in an interview.

The department has a long way to go, though top female fire officials say the department has made substantial strides in the last five years.

With a staff of 2,388, the department has 91 women, 3.8 percent of the total. That's 42 women firefighters and three female supervisors and 44 female paramedics with two female supervisors.

By contrast, women make up just shy of 25 percent of the officers in the Police Department - 1,658 out of 6,720 - a statistic that a department spokesman said is the best in the country.

In the city prison system, 45 percent of the correction officers are women, 794 of 1,745.

What complicates the Fire Department's prospects for increasing the number of women, or minorities for that matter, is the slow turnover of its eligibility list, which usually lasts for four years. The current list, which was set last November, has 2,074 eligible applicants, of whom 128 or 6.2 percent are women.

Ayers said the department needs to spend more money on recruitment efforts.

"We need to make sure that women know there are opportunities here," he said. According to city records, the average salary of a firefighter's union member was $62,000 last year.

Brian McBride, president of Fire Fighters' Local 22, said he didn't think there was a problem with the number of women in the department.

"I don't think it's a problem. I think the examination process is open and competitive and if women want to take the job they can apply," he said.

That's just what Capt. Diane Schweizer did in 1995. She is now the highest-ranking woman in the department, working on the paramedic side. She has taken the test for battalion chief and is hoping to move up.

For generations, she said, the department has been a male-dominated preserve.

"They really started recruiting in the 1990s and they have done a great job in such a short time," she said.

Recently, she spoke to a group of young women about careers in the Fire Department.

"Women don't normally think of themselves in these roles, but I told them how we help people every day, how you get a special, rewarding feeling from that," she said. *