{"id":719,"date":"2006-02-20T09:31:13","date_gmt":"2006-02-20T17:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/02\/everyone_knows_women_are_too_emotional_to_inspect_track.html"},"modified":"2008-01-25T12:23:19","modified_gmt":"2008-01-25T17:23:19","slug":"everyone_knows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/02\/everyone_knows.html","title":{"rendered":"Everyone Knows Women Are Too Emotional To Inspect Track"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe instead of spending $6.7 million on “platform conductors” whose job it is to make sure everyone is aboard the train<\/a>, the MTA can ante up a little bit for sensitivity training<\/a>:<\/p>\n

While most of the city sleeps, Ronda Rivers treads where few women dare go: the dark and dangerous subway tunnels below downtown Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

A sledgehammer slung over a shoulder like a baseball bat, the 36-year-old city track inspector steers clear of the electrified third rail and its deadly current.<\/p>\n

When a train rumbles around a sharp curve, she nimbly pulls herself up several feet to a narrow catwalk, dropping back down when the roaring rig passes.<\/p>\n

She is the Transit Authority’s only female track inspector and one of just 21 women who work in the division, a difficult assignment also held by about 1,800 men.<\/p>\n

“I don’t like working behind a desk, pushing pencils,” she said during a brief predawn break on a recent morning at the Pacific St. station. “I like physical activity. I’m ambitious. I feel I can do what a man can do.”<\/p>\n

But somebody who walks the same tunnels has a problem with that.<\/p>\n

Last month, Rivers and Tanya Jerry, 30, a flagger who alerts train operators when track workers are in the tunnels, found a blizzard of derogatory graffiti.<\/p>\n

The sexist messages near the Pacific St. station were written in the same kind of yellow chalk issued to TA maintenance supervisors and track inspectors.<\/p>\n

“Women should be cleaners, not track inspectors,” the graffiti read. “Women don’t belong on track.”<\/p>\n

The Pacific St. tunnel is part of the women’s assigned area, one of the most dangerous in the system because of its many curves.<\/p>\n

Though some male co-workers and managers have made inappropriate and offensive remarks in the past, Rivers said, the graffiti bothered her even more.<\/p>\n

“I was offended and it was humiliating,” she said. “It was very hostile.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe instead of spending $6.7 million on “platform conductors” whose job it is to make sure everyone is aboard the train, the MTA can ante up a little bit for sensitivity training: While most of the city sleeps, Ronda Rivers treads where few women dare go: the dark and dangerous subway tunnels below downtown Brooklyn. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jerk_move"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}