In this regard, Lott points out, "Between 70% and 80% of police departments explicitly use norming of physical standards in their hiring practices. However, most of the departments that use objective standards do not enforce these rules. Women who fail to meet the absolute standards during academy training are unlikely to be failed out of the program" (p. 276). This lack of consistency in how these standards are applied across the country has caused many observers to lose confidence in their predictive ability. Moreover, in some cases, courts have even disallowed tests that result in differential pass rates between men and women candidates. Citing a 1980 case involving the Philadelphia Police Department, Lott reports that, "The district court ruled that it was unlawful to discharge women who 'failed to achieve a passing score on the firearms qualifying test'" (quoted in Lott at p. 276). As a result, the New York City Police Department simply abandoned all of its physical testing requirements for its law enforcement applicants during the 1980s based on the increasing incidence of litigation by minority and female applicants (Lott). According to Lott, "Some officers hired under relaxed testing lack the strength to pull the trigger on a gun. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of police officers on the streets today who, when a suspect runs from them, have no other option than to call another cop, because they do not have the physical ability to pursue them" (p. 276). Further complicating the physical disparities involved between male and female officers is the fact that the weapons used by female officers do not represent the same deterrent as when they are used by their civilian counterparts, simply because of the nature of the respective encounters involved. For instance, Lott advises, "A gun might not be as much of an equalizer for female officers as it is for women who use a gun defensively. Officers are frequently called on to have physical contact with the criminals that they are pursuing, whereas women who use a gun defensively merely use the gun to keep a threatening person at bay" (Lott, p. 276).
4) Women police officer's positions and promotions in comparison to policemen. According to Smith (2003), "Women have been a part of policing since the mid-nineteenth century but have often served in a limited capacity with very different roles from their male counterparts. Traditionally, women have served in specialized or support positions (e.g., matron, juvenile officer, administrative positions)" (p. 148). By and large, and while there are some important exceptions, it would appear that many women police officers continue to be relegated to these types of positions. For instance, Felperin reports that, "In 1985, Penny Harrington of the Portland Oregon Police Department became the first female Chief of Police, Today, once the last bastion of male domination in the workplace, police organizational attitudes are finally beginning to change. And yet serious problems still remain" (p. 2).
These "serious problems" also directly relate to the fundamental differences that characterize the types of positions held by male and female police officers today. Beginning in the 1960s and early 1970s, women began to seek a greater role and greater representation in the law enforcement community in general and the policing community in particular; although the representation of women in law enforcement has increased since that time, this increase slowed by 2000 (Smith, 2003) and actually began to decline. In this regard, Felperin emphasizes that, "In 2004, women accounted for only 12.7% of all sworn law enforcement positions in large agencies and the numbers are declining. The percentage of sworn female officers in smaller agencies is even lower (most agencies in the U.S. have fewer than ten sworn officers.) in spite of women comprising at 46.5% of the entire labor force" (p. 3). The trends that originally contributed to an increase in the numbers of women in law enforcement were due in large part to legislative initiatives at the time that were intended to afford women in the U.S. with a constitutionally level playing field in terms of employment. According to Zhao, Herbst and Lovrich (2001), "Noteworthy changes in female representation in policing began with the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Since that time, we know with relative certainty that there are substantially more female officers in policing than there were 25 years ago" (p. 243). Based on an analysis of the results of several surveys of law enforcement agencies administered during 1980 and 1990, there has been a significant...
Role of Women in Law Enforcement Agencies Seminar type mini paper Gender discrimination has long been a topic of controversial debate. While much has been done about it in the U.S.A. And Britain, where many laws and regulations have been passed in order to encourage the participation of women in all fields irrespective of their being a female, there still are differences. These differences exist most specifically in areas that have traditionally been
Women have not played a significant role in law enforcement until recently, and especially since the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission legislation. Law enforcement continues to be a male-dominated profession, although women are becoming increasingly visible at multiple levels of the profession. Estimated representation of women in law enforcement ranges from 2 to 15%, depending on the jurisdiction/department, the rank/role, and the year of the survey (Blackstock, 2015, Horne, 2006;
"By the end of the 1980s many departments had set up detailed procedures to ensure equality and had employed full-time and specialist staff to promote and pursue such policies." (Heidensohn, 1995, p. 60) The number of females in law enforcement was to increase rapidly and in 1986 about 9 per cent of U.S. officers were female. (Adler 1990) One of the key issues that had to be overcome was the
, 1994)." (Salazar, 253) This is not just troubling as a statistical illustrator of the problem's prevalence but it is indicative of a much larger cultural condition predisposing us to violence toward women. With ties to the patriarchal machinations of the country's monarchical origins and a dependency upon the fortification of such leanings in modern legal, social and even familial structure, the issue of domestic violence is very much a
Better still, don't let it happen. (para. 61) In the United States, citizens take a dim view of unbridled police powers. They were condemnatory of Samuel a. Alito, a young U.S. President Ronald Reagan administration lawyer, and Supreme Court nominee, who took an expansive view of government law-enforcement powers in manycases where he was called upon to balance the prerogatives of police and prosecutors with the rights of individuals, according
(269) It would seem that the artists and the press of the era both recognized a hot commodity when they saw one, and in this pre-Internet/Cable/Hustler era, beautiful women portrayed in a lascivious fashion would naturally appeal to the prurient interests of the men of the day who might well have been personally fed up with the Victorian morals that controlled and dominated their lives otherwise. In this regard, Pyne
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now