A Very Brief History Of Women In Law Enforcement

Women in Law Enforcement History of Women in Law Enforcement

As women’s roles in the home and workforce changed from the beginning of the 1900s, so did their roles change in law enforcement. The first police departments in the United States were established in the 1800s and in 1845 women started as matrons in New York City’s jails (Smith, 1). Women’s role in law enforcement started as a purely social work role. For example, in Chicago in 1891 assigned Marie Owen as a “patrolman” but she handled work that dealt primarily with women and children. Her job never included patrolling anywhere (Smith, 1). This style of police work continued into the 20th century when Los Angeles went a step further in 1910 and swore in the first official “policewoman”

Gender roles and social norms that have permeated the United States shows that policing is a male career due to its physically demanding and aggressive nature. While the gender of the female has been pushed to be the caregiver thus positions such as social work, doctor, stay at home mom, nanny, etc. have been pushed upon females at a young age, which discourages them from leaning toward law enforcement (Marshall, 10). This barrier is the main reason why women are underrepresented within the police force at a low of 15% of all police nation wide. Occupational norms “established by gender roles create a huge barrier for women as they can affect the number of women applying for careers in law enforcement’ (Marshall, 10). Also due to these roles of the male machismo workplace and low female worker, policing has been deemed the most gendered occupation (Marshall, 10). Although there has been drastic changes in mindset around gender and social norms in the United States, these gender norms remain the same and the dominant way of acting within the

This is due to several factors: 1. Police departments are generally a patriarch management workplace, 2. Departments are male dominated and 3. Male attitudes toward women in law enforcement. Harassment and discrimination tend to go hand in hand in these situations. For example, males within LAPD formed a secret organization named “Men against Women”, which sought to use routine harassment, intimidation, and criminal activities against female officers (Marshall, 14). In 2008, a female LAPD officer was awarded $2.25 million because “male members of the unit exposed their genitalia, made inappropriate remarks and excluded her from training opportunities” (Woolsey,1 ). One of the issues that stems from speaking out against sexual harassment within some departments leads to retaliatory measures against the whistleblower, which shows an unwritten code of silence, which is linked to another subculture (Woolsey,