On the Firing Line : Despite Some Deaths, Women Still Want Chance at Hazardous Jobs

After helping women win jobs in the grimy depths of Eastern coal mines, attorney Betty Jean Hall knew it wasn’t a question of if a female miner would ever die on the job, it was a question of when.

“I remember the very first press conference back in 1978 when we were starting the Coal Employment Project and announced our plans to help (more) women get jobs in mines,” said Hall, a founder of the advocacy group.

“One of the first questions from a reporter was, “Well aren’t you gonna feel guilty when children’s mommies start getting killed?’ My answer at that time stands today: We are not urging women to start any particular career, to become miners or policemen or join the military service. It is a woman’s choice and if she decides that is what she wants to do, I am there to support her.”

The very next year in Coalport, Pa., a mine collapse claimed the life of 35-year-old miner Marilyn McClusker. It had taken McClusker two years and a federal sex discrimination suit against the Rushton Coal Co. to get her job.

“It was a startling event. I have to admit it took me aback,” said Hall, who is now associate director of the Occupational Safety and Health Law Center, a nonprofit group based in Shepherdstown, Va. “But the more I thought about it, the more I knew my answer to that reporter was the right one.”

For years now, women have been breaking the barriers that kept them out of physically dangerous jobs. Today, women are miners, firefighters, police officers and soldiers. Still, it can come as a shock when they are killed in the course of their work.

Angelenos, already bombarded by media reports on the dangers faced by female soldiers in the Persian Gulf, learned last week that a female police officer was killed in the line of duty--the first in the history of the city.

Tina Kerbrat, 34, was shot as she and her male partner approached two men drinking on the street. The fact that she was the mother of two small children seemed to make the loss harder to take. And the idea that Army Spec. Melissa Rathbun-Nealy, the only woman to be listed as missing in action in the Gulf, might be a prisoner in enemy hands is chilling to many.

Some women’s advocates wonder what effect these events will have on women’s progress in “non-traditional” job categories. Will the barriers come down for once and for all now that it’s clear women are willing to take the same risks as men? Or will there be a backlash against women risking their lives on the job?

Women who hold these dangerous jobs say simply that they have made their choices and are willing to live with the consequences. They also say that for the most part, they feel supported by colleagues, family and friends. Not only that, they say traditionally dangerous workplaces become safer when women arrive on the job.

“This (women in physically dangerous jobs) is something that gets discussed a lot, and most of us are worried that the danger of these kinds of jobs will be used as an excuse to turn back the clock on women’s participation in the work force,” said Leslie Wolfe, executive director of the Center for Women’s Policy Studies, a Washington, D.C., institute that focuses on the social, legal and economic status of women.

“We have to remember that women are far more endangered by rape and battering than by their work. In the beginning of this stage of the women’s movement in the ‘60’s, we did talk about equal rights and responsibilities, and there is that sense that women must be allowed to share the glories of equality and also the burdens.”

Cynthia Marano, executive director of Wider Opportunities for Women, a national women’s employment organization, foresees one of two possible outcomes to the Gulf War: combat restrictions for women might go the way of the musket, or there may be a backlash much like the one that sent Rosie the Riveter from the assembly line back to the laundry line after World War II.

“If we see a lot of media coverage of dead women’s bodies, and a lot of single mothers who are killed and if unemployment continues, I think we could see a backlash,” said Marano.

“After World War II, we had the men coming home and a well-documented propaganda campaign to get women out of the work place.”

Nonetheless, she said, “My view is that it is always tough to stop opportunity and the more women are conscious of the ways opportunity has been blocked, the less willing they will be to accept such propaganda campaigns.”

Marano also cautions against the visceral emotional reaction to women dying on the job that even front-line feminists seems to be grappling with, particularly if they are mothers, as was Tina Kerbrat.

“I think we are dealing with a mother-worshipping theme that is very basic to our culture,” she said.

“And what we are seeing (the endangering of women) is very counter to what is almost an archetypal mother-worship that is part of our society. That is why we have these responses. We also have them, by the way, about mothers being murderers.

“We have a notion about what a mother is and what a mother should be that is enormously powerful. When a mother kills her child, for example, we have a much greater response than when a father kills his child.

“This is not to say that policy should be based on that, or that people’s opportunities should be blocked by this archetype.”

In the last decade, public attitudes have become more liberal toward women in combat roles. Ten years ago, an NBC News/Associated Press poll found that 36% of its respondents said women should be allowed to hold combat jobs. Five years later, though, that number had jumped to 52%. That trend has continued.

In a Feb. 15 Newsweek poll, 51% of those queried said that women in the armed services should get combat assignments if they want them, and another 28% said women should get combat assignments on the same terms as men. A mere 18% said that women should never get combat assignments.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted the week of Feb. 1 asked respondents whether, if the draft were reinstated, they would favor men and women being drafted, or just men.

Forty-seven percent said both sexes should be drafted; 50% said the draft should be limited to men only.

“The move has been away from prohibiting women from combat roles, but there still appears to be some reluctance to require them to be in combat,” said John Brennan, director of the Los Angeles Times Poll.

If women die in a ground war, said Brennan, “It is impossible to say what the reaction will be.” However, he added, “This will be an important moment for society in analyzing women’s roles. It certainly could be a watershed moment for women.”

Air Force Lt. Col. Kelly Hamilton-Barlow, 41, who spent 5 1/2 months flying a KC-135 mid-air refueler in Operation Desert Shield, said she hopes women will eventually be able to fly the aircraft from which the Air Force now bans them: fighters, bombers, gunships, most helicopters and some reconnaissance aircraft.

“They say that (women) are protected from being taken prisoner or killed, but one of the objects of war is to take out supply lines and that is where the women are,” said Hamilton-Barlow who is stationed at Grissom Air Force Base, about 70 miles north of Indianapolis. “Melissa (Rathbun-Nealy) was in a support field--the law was supposed to protect her.”

Hamilton-Barlow recently attended a conference on career limitations faced by military women and learned that the only jobs open to women in the “missile career field” were those involving long-range missiles.

“We asked, ‘What is a long-range missile?’ and they said, ‘Thirty-five miles.’ You’re gonna tell me that 35 miles is gonna protect me? Look at the Scud attacks. I guess what it protects me from is the opportunity to be promoted.”

The mother of a 22-year-old son, Hamilton-Barlow said that while she was deployed, she sent her son a letter explaining what he must do if she died. “I said, ‘If anything happens to me, you must never let them take away the advances that we have made.’ ”

As for public reaction to women in the Gulf, said Hamilton-Barlow, she has experienced nothing but positive reinforcement, even after Rathbun-Healy disappeared in action.

“In my dealings with people day-to-day, I have been truly pleased,” she said. “The response I got, and I am talking downtown Middle America--Kokomo, Ind.--is not that she shouldn’t have been there, but that she is a professional woman and that she will do what she has to do. After all, we’ve had women POWs in all the wars.”

One of the benefits to having women in dangerous jobs, say Hamilton-Barlow, coal miner Carol Davis and Los Angeles Police Officer Jefferia Grayson, is that they contribute to workplace safety.

“Maybe it’s the mothering instinct,” said Davis, 41, a laid-off Pennsylvania miner. “Most women will carry out safety instructions to the letter. Men are always looking for shortcuts.”

“We aren’t here because we want to be John Wayne,” said Jefferia Grayson, 28, a 6 1/2-year LAPD veteran. “Some of us are here because we want to make $45,000 or $50,000 a year and drive luxury cars or own our own home. Others of us are here because maybe we have children that we need to support alone. But the macho thing very seldom enters into it.

“We as women don’t think it takes anything away from us to be safe, to go by the rules, to do what we are told to do. It’s not a personal thing like, ‘Oh, they’re taking away our fun because we can’t wreck some police cars today.’

“We know from the beginning that there are physical limitations we have to deal with, so we are not as quick to grab your collar. That might not work for us, so we are forced to use our minds.”

Hamilton-Barlow agreed. “We, as women, perceive that we need to know our business better (than men). We know well enough not to fake it. I would never guess at an answer I didn’t know. We lack the ego.

“In briefings, I’ve noticed that sometimes men don’t want to ask the questions, and afterwards, you’ll say, ‘Do you know how to do what we just talked about?’ And they’ll say, ‘No.’ But they won’t ask in front of people.”

The bottom line for these women is that they should be free to choose the jobs they want.

“This is my chosen profession,” said Davis, who once worked under ground until she was 8 1/2 months pregnant.

“I don’t know any woman who has worked in a coal mine who would not go back to that job. I can’t explain it. It’s not the work--no one craves heavy work--it’s the atmosphere, the camaraderie, the family-type thing. This is the only job for us.”