While women in New York City are well-represented in many fields dominated by men just a generation ago, one area is noticeably lacking in estrogen: doormen, or, door attendants, as they might be called. The New York Times reports that of the 12,800 unionized door attendants and porters in the city, only about 300 are women.
“We all say ‘doormen’ for a reason: you really don’t see many women doing it,” Amy Peterson, the president of Nontraditional Employment for Women, a nonprofit organization, told the Times. “But that’s not because employers don’t want to hire women, and it’s not because women aren’t ready.”
Monique Catus, a door attendant at An Apartment Building On East 51st Street explains how hard it can be for women to be hired in jobs like hers thusly: “to get a doorman job, usually somebody has to die.” [NYT]