FRONTERA — Maureen McDermott has fewer privileges, greater restrictions and is more isolated than any other condemned inmate in the California prison system.

It is not because of her behavior behind bars. She is described as a model inmate by prison authorities. It is not because of her crime. She paid a man to murder her roommate so she could collect his insurance policy, but many inmates on Death Row have committed crimes just as heinous.

McDermott is denied the basic freedoms other Death Row inmates take for granted simply because she is a woman, the first woman on Death Row in California in 15 years.

McDermott's life on Death Row highlights the unequal treatment women inmates receive in the prison system, experts say, and draws attention to the status of condemned women, who often are left out of the capital punishment debate. American Civil Liberties Union attorneys currently are investigating the McDermott case.

The Death Row for women at Frontera bears little resemblance to the sprawling series of cellblocks at San Quentin Prison, where 297 condemned men are awaiting execution. The women's Death Row consists of a single cell at the California Institution for Women, in a maximum security housing unit called Greystone.

McDermott, 43, a former nurse at County-USC Medical Center, is locked inside a 6-by-12-foot cell with a solid steel door almost 23 hours a day. She has no contact with other inmates, and lives a life of almost complete isolation. On the average day, she leaves her cell for about an hour, only to exercise--alone--on a small patch of blacktop behind the prison. She is allowed to leave her cell three times a week for showers.

The men on Death Row who are not disciplinary problems, however, are allowed to leave their cells from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. They can play cards or table tennis, or just wander along the walkways and visit with other inmates. On the yard they can play basketball together, lift weights or work out on punching bags.

They have access to typewriters, and, unlike McDermott, who is separated from visitors by glass and must communicate by telephone, the men are allowed contact visits.

The men have these privileges because a number of inmates filed a lawsuit in the late 1970s, and a federal court ordered the prison to improve Death Row living conditions. But the court order, and the specific privileges mandated, apply just to the men at San Quentin, not to condemned women.