Women Police Officers

Women Today Are Under-represented In The Police Force

Alice Stebbins Wells was the first female police officer hired by the Los Angeles police department in 1910 (Walker & Katz, 2005). In the early years of women police officers women were hired as social workers for juveniles, as matrons, dispatchers, and to help guard female inmates.

Law enforcement as a career has been increasingly more popular for women in recent years; however, the numbers have not increased greatly. In 2001, women accounted for only 12.7% of all sworn law enforcement positions in large agencies (with 100 or more sworn personnel) a figure that is less than four percentage points higher than in 1990, when women comprised 9% of sworn officers. These figures indicate that women only account for 11.2% of all sworn law enforcement personnel in the U.S. dramatically less than the participation of women in the whole of the labor force at 46.5% (National Center for Women in Policing [NCWP], 2001).

One obstacle that women have always faced, and still due at times is discrimination in the hiring practice. Many of the original height and weight prerequisites were discriminatory and had been in place to discriminate against women (Potts, 1983). Potts (1983) wrote that in Alabama and Maryland, standards had been purposely set to exclude 81% of females between 18 and 34 years because administrative personnel did not believe that women should be police officers.

Hiring discrimination started to decrease with the creation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, then the Crime Control Act of 1973, followed. The final Act to discourage discrimination was the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1974. These acts ...

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...Despite all the studies, the female and male police styles are still controversial. Each person temperament and individual police style is more important than a person's gender. Many experts agree that a person's aggressiveness is a product of a department's philosophy and the tone set by the ranking officers. This tone is set when officers are trained to think of themselves as fighters against crime and they start to view citizens as the enemy (Bayley, 1988).

In the end, evidence proves the women are very capable of performing the job of peace officers. Current ranking officers must set a tone with in their perspective department embracing the addition of more female officers before a significant difference will be seen. In turn the junior officers will follow suit and work together with the

female officers to become one cohesive law enforcement unit.