Citing a firewall for women within the New York City Fire Department, five ranking female emergency medical service workers have filed suit against Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the department, charging it routinely discriminates against women and keeps them from rising to the highest ranks.

The suit was filed on behalf of Amy Monroe, Kathleen Gonczi, Adrienne Knight, Mary Dandridge and Irene Kruiten by Kurland &Associates and Kramer &Dunleavy, who are acting as co-counsel in the suit. The action names Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the FDNY, FDNY Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, FDNY chief of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) John Peruggia and the New York City Civil Service Commission.

According to a lawyer on the case, Yetta G. Kurland, only a small number of women rise through the ranks. EMS has “just a handful of ranking female officers,” including seven chiefs and a little over a dozen captains on a force of about 2,500. The showing on the fire fighting side is even smaller. With a force of 11,600, Kurland said there are “only a total of approximately 30 women in any positions.” What’s more, EMS officers “where the overwhelming majority of women are, make significantly less than their fireside male counterparts.”

Kurland added, “This sends a clear message that women are not treated as equals and that the FDNY’s publicized efforts to recruit women are nothing more than a smoke screen designed to disguise these long-term and abysmal practices.”

The women have charged that their rights have been violated under the New York Equal Protection Law, New York Human Rights Law, New York Human Rights Statues and the New York City Administrative Code. All said they’ve requested evaluations or letters of recommendations and been denied and/or applied unsuccessfully for promotions.

EMS Captain Amy Monroe said she wasn’t the only woman to apply for the deputy chief position to be rebuffed. “Several other women applied as well, and all of us had outstanding evaluations and experiences in specialty units. But in the end, a man was selected, and he did not even have the required evaluations or recommendations for promotion.”

Another woman said that men in the department “with less experience often have more opportunity. When you put a qualified woman up against a less qualified man, your record doesn’t count. Your gender does.”

Their suit charges that males “consistently receive promotions to high-level FDNY positions with less favorable recommendations and less experience” than the plaintiffs have and that “the selection process used by the FDNY is subjective and not based on concrete data.”

They also charge that the FDNY fails to post all job openings in all facilities and to notify all employees.

The FDNY did not return an AmNews phone call for comment.

Andrienne Knight said women make up a tiny percentage of employees at FDNY “and the future doesn’t look much better. Until the FDNY understands that it discriminates based on gender and race, these numbers are not going to improve.”

Mary Dandridge charged, “There is a pattern and practice of discrimination against women. All of us have encountered the resistance, the disregard for our experiences and talent.”

DC 37 Local 3621 President Tom Eppinger, whose union represents the five women, stands by the women. He said the FDNY violated Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) law by not posting job openings, but instead distributing them as notices that came with paychecks every two weeks. The explanation Eppinger received regarding FDNY’s failure to promote the women was one he said “gives you the sense that they knew who they were going to pick” for promotions in the first place.

Apparently, the women are not alone. Eppinger said two other FDNY employees have filed a lawsuit charging discrimination on the basis of race. “The question you have to ask yourself is whether FDNY is promoting people because they’re qualified or promoting them just to promote them. The process is very, very flawed. When I have people who feel that they’re not getting a chance because they’re Black or they’re female, that’s wrong. Nobody should feel that way,” he said.