NEW YORK -- It may be the last virtually all male profession in New York. Even the job title "doorman" implies exclusion. Now a lawsuit that may determine whether the city's fanciest buildings have "doors to discrimination" is about to go to trial.

FeedRoom

Door To Discrimination?

Co-op and condo managers and attorneys deny any discrimination. A woman who's suing them says the numbers are impossible to explain any other way. Who, she asks, has ever seen a New York doorwoman?

It doesn't take inside information to analyze the doorman industry. A walk up Manhattan's grand avenues helps confirm what union rolls reveal: out of more than 7,000 co-op, condo and other residential employees at the door no more than 10 are women.

"There's a more authoritarian figure in men," Carolyn Breidenbach, a co-op resident, said.

Longtime Park Avenue resident Breidenbach says the one-sex tradition may have its roots in a dated vision of male superiority when it comes to providing security.

Even so, Panathy Hill says she was stunned by the response nine years ago, after she submitted a doorman application to managing agent Douglas Elliman Gibbons and Ives.

[Editor's note: The Douglas Elliman brand name has since been purchased. The current owners have no connection to Panathy Hill's application for employment, nor are they defendants in a lawsuit brought by Hill.]

"When I was finally called in, the woman that interviewed me told me that they don't hire women," Hill said.

Hill figured her ability to provide security shouldn't be an issue because of her existing career: she was--and is--a correction officer. Why does she want to be a doorwoman?

"It's safe. It's safer than the job that I'm doing now. It's a lot of money," Hill said.

So, she sued the managing agent and several east side co-ops it represents alleging both gender and racial bias.

"This is the last bastion of discrimination in New York. And it's not just Douglas Elliman," Madeline Bryer, Hill's attorney, said.

The attorney who initially defended Douglas Elliman against Hill's lawsuit responded by denying the allegations.

"There was never any merit to the case. There still isn't any," attorney Robert Lewis, said by phone.

But judges have refused to dismiss the case, which goes to trial next month. And there's the larger inescapable question: why are they almost no doorwomen?

NewsChannel 4 asked the woman who chairs the Real Estate Board's Residential Management Council, which includes most managing agents.

"Women may be discouraged from applying for those kinds of jobs. But there should be no reason that a woman can't do that kind of job," Ronni Lynn Arougheti, of the Real Estate Board, said.

Stuart Saft, an attorney who represents more than 250 coop boards and is chairman of the city's Council of Cooperatives and Condominiums, says the doormen's union should help recruit women. He points out that many cooperative directors, who set hiring policy, are themselves of the other sex.

"The women of these boards are not purposely discriminating against their sisters who would want these jobs. I think the Boards just have been focusing on other more immediate problems," Saft said.

On Park Avenue, residents say it does indeed come down to a prospective employee's ability to stop trouble at the door.

"If she could kick some guy's butt, then I'd feel great. If she couldn't, then I'd feel really uncomfortable," Amy Federman, a resident, said.

"Women are in the Army and they fight wars, so why not open the door," Susi Romney, another resident, said.

For Correction Officer Hill, the bottom line is getting a good paying secure job with less stress--and a clientele that sometimes tips.