Women in Law Enforcement

 

Once considered one of the last male dominated professions, women are making their mark throughout police organizations and the criminal justice system. Although male attitudes have slowly begun to change, many problems still exist.

In 2004, women accounted for less than 13 percent of all sworn law enforcement positions in large agencies, and only 9 percent of the supervisory positions are held by women. In spite of the fact that women make up over 46 percent of the work force, most law enforcement agencies in the United States have fewer than ten female officers in their organization.

 

Although women can be just as effective as a male officer, many women never consider a career in law enforcement due to the nature of the job. Additional factors keeping women out of the law enforcement profession may also be unfair hiring practices and recruitment policies that keep the number of women applying low to begin with.

While I was in a position to select and hire new agents, I found it extremely difficult to recruit qualified women applicants. It was even more difficult to find women minority applicants. During my six years as a manager, not one African American male or female applied for a position in our Allentown Office. Equally nonexistent were Hispanic or any other women minority applicants.

Over the past two decades of my law enforcement career, I have witnessed a greater emphasis on community oriented policing and crime prevention, which creates a greater necessity for communication within the community. As such, I would have expected the new wave of “community policing” to have led to more than a 12 percent representation of women in the law enforcement community. 

          For the women who do choose a career in law enforcement, they are forced to deal with many more disadvantages that their male coworkers. Once hired, women face discrimination, sexual harassment, or peer intimidation. Women also often lack role models or mentors on the force to help them gain promotions. As a result, many never even take promotional exams.

          Examining complaints about supervisors during the course of the year, policing is the second most sexist organization in the world behind only the Navy, which has a sexual harassment complaint rate of 90 percent. According to Martin (1996), in one study, 63 percent of the 72 women officers interviewed claimed that they experienced sexual harassment while working on the police force. Sexual harassment studies that include African American women report sexual discrimination at higher rates than women of other ethnic groups. In addition, research in the Los Angeles Police Department found that “non-white women officers experienced a greater degree of social discrimination than white women.” (Texeira, 2002). 

Twenty-five percent reported instance of “quid pro quo” harassment, which is the most commonly recognized for of sexual harassment. It occurs when job benefits such as promotions, salary increases, work assignments, performance expectations and other conditions of employment are made contingent on the provision of sexual favors.

While these numbers are disturbing, what is even more alarming are statistics showing that only 11 percent of all women police officers report sexual discrimination, and only 3 percent are willing to continue pursuing the matter through formal channels. According to a survey, 50 percent of women officers ignored the harassment, 25 percent used sick leave, 15 percent resigned, and 10 percent dropped their work productivity.

Clearly, the criminal justice community must take a more proactive approach to the problem of sexual harassment though stronger policies and consequences to anyone who violates the rights of women law enforcement personnel.

References: 

Collins, P. & Scarborough, K. (2001). Women in Public and Private Law

             Enforcement. NY: Butterworth Heinemann.

Felperin, J. (2004). Women in law Enforcement: two steps forward, three steps

            back. Retrieved from http://www.policeone.com/police-recruting/articles.

Martin, S. & Jurik, N. (1996). Doing Justice, Doing Gender: Women in law and

           Criminal Justice Occupations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

 

Texeira, T. M. (2002). ''Who Protects and Serves Me?'': A Case Study of Sexual

Harassment of African American Women in One U.S. Law Enforcement

Agency. Gender & Society. doi: 10.1177/0891243202016004007