Women in Policing around the World

Doing Gender and Policing in a Gendered Organization

Venessa Garcia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781351643887
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

Women in Policing around the World is a historical, legal, political, and social examination of women in policing. The book opens with a comparison of cultural definitions of gender and how this affects women's work in general and policing specifically. The book then takes the reader through women in policing in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, featuring several countries within the major regions of the world. Major commonalities and differences are identified in the areas of recruitment, training, deployment, promotion, and violence against women.

Among the key features of this book is a balanced coverage of historical and timely events that led to the current status of women police in their respective countries. The book identifies the commonalities that women police experience throughout the world, relying on the most current research. The book also dedicates coverage of policing violence against women in society as well as within the police organization itself. The author includes tables to allow for national comparisons throughout the book, as well as current and historical photos.

This book is intended for researchers and students of police culture and women in policing. It does not rely heavily on one country or region, thus allowing for an enlightening international comparison.

Chapter 1

The Sociology of Gender

The police organization has always been what social scientists call a gendered organization. A gendered organization is one in which organizational policies, practices, and ideologies are patterned according to gender differences (Acker 1992). Within policing, the gender of focus is the male. The police organization has always been male dominated, valuing aggression and male gender roles. However, women in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres started joining police organizations around the world in the early 1900s, leading researchers and reformers to label this time the international policewoman’s movement. Initially, women joined under the campaign that they brought qualities that only women possess. As a result, they started as matrons working only with women and children and did not have arrest power (Garcia 2003). This campaign allowed women to find a place in policing, but for many decades around the world, they were not fully accepted. Today, policing remains a male-dominated gendered organization. We find many more men holding official police positions of authority. We also find that men are much more likely to hold higher-ranking positions.

Research on policing abounds; however, we find a lack of focus on the gendered nature of policing, the central concept within this book. In this book, I examine the historical, legal, political, and social context of women in policing. Furthermore, I take a global look at women’s experiences within this gendered occupation. Most research focuses on policing within one nation. This book examines women in policing around the globe. An examination of various nations reinforces the fact that gender stratification is a major part of every culture. It is my intention to take the reader around the globe by focusing on various nations and examining how their police systems treat female police. This chapter introduces the reader to the sociology of gender as we examine gender in society. After defining major concepts within the sociology of gender, I guide the reader through understanding gender difference and gender stratification. I then describe women’s rights and their movement into the workforce and ultimately into the police workforce.

Chapter 2 situates our understanding of gender in policing by examining gender ideologies, religious edicts, and the politics of gender as they play out in policing. In Chapter 3, I examine the historical and current images of women in policing in the various regions of the Eastern Hemisphere: Asia and Oceania (Australasia), Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and Central and Eastern Europe. In Chapter 4, I examine women in policing in the Western Hemisphere: Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, and Western Europe. This examination will provide the evidence that policing as a gendered organization is a worldwide phenomenon.

Bringing women’s work to the present day and focusing on structural forms of gendered policing, Chapter 5 examines women’s inroads into policing via the police structure. Chapter 5 takes a closer look at gendered substructure and subtext within the police organization. Women on the job often find themselves in a no-win situation within a male-dominated organization. They are expected to behave like women but are evaluated on a male standard of policing. However, since gender ideologies dictate that women are not capable of doing man’s work, their evaluations often indicate that they fall short of being worthy of wearing the badge. Specifically, I examine recruitment, training, promotion, and social and legal resistance to women in policing, as well as legal reform. Chapter 6 moves further into this conversation by examining gendered policing in relation to resistance, sexual harassment, and policing gender-based violence. One can often gain insight into the gender ideologies of a society by examining how the justice system responds to crimes involving special victims.

I end the book with Chapter 7 and an assessment of the progress that women have made within policing. I start the chapter with an examination of the gendered stress that results from the rejection, gender discrimination, and sexual harassment discussed in earlier chapters. Women’s rights groups have always aided the progression of women into the police organization. Here, I look at women police associations, networking, and mentoring. I also briefly examine women in global policing, specifically women in the UN Police. I end the book with strategies for the equality and equity of women in policing. Because this book’s author is from the United States, this is the frame of reference. However, this does not presume that the United States policing system is the measuring rod against which we should hold other nations. Additionally, it must be noted that throughout the book I use the terms “women police” and “policewomen.” The term “women police” refers to the status of women police in countries where they are integrated or given the title. The term “policewomen” is used to refer to early women police who typically were not integrated and were not given equal police power. It is also used when examining countries that refer to women police as “policewomen.”

The Sociology of Gender

In this book, the sociology of gender is applied to examine women in policing. The sociology of gender is the study of the conditions of men and women in society. To understand these conditions, we must first define major concepts within the sociology of gender. Sex and gender are master statuses within our society. This means that they are primary to our understanding of human identity within society. Just as gender is a master status, we find that race, age, income, sexual orientation, physical ability, religion, and nationality are also master statuses that bring complexity to understanding gender. Gender is defined as the social construction of masculinity and femininity, which includes nonbinary genders in many countries. Sex, on the other hand, is defined as the biological distinctions of male and female based on reproductive organs. When examining sex and gender as they are constructed by society (see Garcia 2003), sociologists find that society tends to define these concepts as one and the same. That is, society claims that sex determines gender, and to know one’s gender is to know one’s sex. However, we must recognize that while society claims that sex is a biological distinction, it denies anything other than male and female. Here, transgender people are included in the binary sex and gender categories.

It has long been discovered that there also exists the sex category intersex, previously identified as hermaphrodite. Yet, society has never identified intersex as a sex category. Instead, it is considered a condition. This sex category is a mesh of male and female in which the individual is born with both female and male reproductive organs to varying degrees (Rosenblum and Travis 1996). Individuals who are intersex do not fit into the neat two-category construct of male and female. Denying the intersex status thus tells us that sex itself is a socially constructed status.

Gender, on the other hand, is identified as the socially acceptable behaviors, appearances, and ways of being that are linked to one’s specific sex. We will say that people embody gender. While social scientists have identified gender as socially constructed, members of society tend to define and practice gender as an essential part of one’s sex. Accordingly, one must practice gender roles congruent with one’s sex. Thus, males must be masculine (a concept of gender), do men’s work, such as policing, firefighting, doctoring, and look like males, such as wearing pants or suits, masculine shoes, and men’s hairstyles. We identify males as boys and men. They are expected to embody maleness or masculinity. Females, on the other hand, must be feminine (also a concept of gender), do women’s work, such as nursing and teaching, and look like females, such as wearing dresses and skirts, dainty shoes, and women’s hairstyles. We identify females as girls and women. They are expected to embody femaleness, womanhood, or femininity.

Gender differences tend to be identified as sex differences. Thus, embodying gender is defined as natural to one’s sex (Garcia and McManimon 2011). This is a stance taken by essentialism, which claims that the conditions in social life are innate to people. It is a fundamental ideology of culture (Loseke 1999). Hence, it is believed that acting like a boy or a girl is part of the biological makeup of boys and girls. When society considers the play activities that girls desire it assumes that girls want to play ballerina, house, Barbie^©, and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The Sociology of Gender
• 2 Ideology and Images of Women and Policing
• 3 Past and Current Status of Women Police in the Eastern Hemisphere
• 4 Past and Current Status of Women Police in the Western Hemisphere
• 5 Recruitment, Training, and Promotion of Women in the Gendered Police Organization
• 6 Gendered Policing: Working Conditions and Gender-Based Violence
• 7 Revisiting the Police Organization: Future Directions
• References
• Index