Paper Topic:

Women in Law Enforcement

Running Head : FEMALE OFFICERS

Female Police Officers Still Not Considered Equals

Student Name

As matrons , females have had a place in law enforcement since the 19th century . Los Angeles hired Alice Stebbins Wells in 1910 , as the first female police officer (Dodge et al . 2004 ) with full police officer authority . While times have certainly changed since then , when the female officer 's role was mostly secretarial , it can still be argued that the advancements made are not enough to claim that male and female police officers are equal

Female officers

often complain of feeling stereotyped . Ronald Burke Astrid Richardsen , and Monica Martinussen (2006 ) wrote that females tend to handle more domestic and child-related incidents (p . 514 , as opposed to the men who handle situations with bigger threats of violence . This is probably due to the misconception that all women are physically weaker than men . On some departments , females are actually hired to be trained as decoy prostitutes in solicitation stings According to Mary Dodge , Donna Starr-Gimeno , and Thomas Williams (2004 the decoy stings regulate women officers to a position of powerlessness and subjugation (p . 72 . Some women don 't mind the task yet others complain that the ridicule from male officers may undermine the authority and confidence of women who act as decoys (p . 82 . The fact is , however , there is no task that is as degrading to male officers as pretending to be a prostitute is for many female officers . Males authority figures justify this act by claiming that cleaning up prostitution also cleans up drug dealing and abuse , sexual assaults on the women by the johns ' and even murder of the prostitutes

According to Burke et al (2004 , female officers experience more sexual harassment from colleagues and the civilian public than do males (p . 514 . The same report concludes that women also suffer from discrimination and lack of equal opportunity . With regard to equal opportunity , Abby Goodnough (1997 ) wrote , Most suburban police departments still employ only a handful of female officers , and hundreds have at all (p . B1 . Goodnough also wrote , In 1995 , the last year for which national figures are available , only 5 .3 percent of police officers were women (p . B1 . Goodnough quoted detective Kimberly Turiano of the Cherry Hill , New Jersey police department as saying women who want to be officers must be a pain ' so that police departments don 't overlook them . Goodnough 's article also addressed discrimination . She wrote that may people believ that even when females get hired onto an department they cannot pass the physical fitness test required in most academies , like the one in Sea Girt , New Jersey

There are other types of discrimination . Rebecca Porter (2005 ) wrote The Tenth Circuit has reinstated the sex discrimination claims of two female Albuquerque police officers who were forced to use sick time for leave they took under the Family and Medical leave act (FMLA , while men taking FMLA were allowed to use compensatory time (para . 1 . The case was brought about...

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