Women began working as police officers in the United States as early as the 1890s. Women made up 12.6% of all U.S. sworn police officers in 2018. Employed largely as prison matrons in the 19th century, women took on more and increasingly diverse roles in the latter half of the 20th century. They face a particular set of challenges given the history of their entry into the profession, their low rates of participation, and the complex identities they negotiate in the work place. Women who work in law enforcement have struggled for years to gain acceptance in their workplace. Some of their biggest challenges are their lack of representation, stereotypes around women, and intersectionality. Despite these challenges, women have proven to be more calm and use less force. Women go into situations more level-headed than males, and are able to deescalate situations better.
Organizations such as the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives (NAWLEE) offer mentoring services to women, guiding newly appointed head female officers to become better leaders.
History Early entry into the profession Women entered the criminal justice professions in the early 1800s, employed primarily as prison matrons. Their primary responsibilities were to ensure the well-being of women and children in jails. Many women became involved in social and moral reform movements in the late 1880s and early 1900s, which facilitated their visibility in the sphere of policing and public vigilance. These moral reform movements concerned themselves with eliminating gambling, prostitution, public obscenity, alcoholism and other behaviors they considered vices. Marie Owens is believed to be the first professional police woman in the United States, joining the Chicago Police Department in 1891. Other early police officers include Alice Stebbins Wells, commissioned as an officer in 1910 in Los Angeles, and Lola Baldwin, an early policewoman working for the Portland Police Department on women's and children's issues. She officially began her work in 1908, but some draw distinctions between their arrest powers and the content of their work. The policewomen that followed Owens, Stebbins Wells, and Baldwin in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and onward fit a certain profile. They were often middle or upper class women who found their inspiration in moral reform and counseling movements. Indeed, these movements often served as advocates for including women in the policing profession as well as organizations such as the Federation of Women's Clubs, The League of Women Voters, and the National Women's Christian Temperance Union. Supporting the inclusion and growth of women in the police force aligned with the mission of these organizations, many of which sought to expand women's roles in civic and public life. 1915 saw the creation of the International Association of Policewomen, which worked to advocate for more opportunities for women in policing. The work of these early policewomen often involved desk work, supervision, and counseling of criminals. This counseling was geared mostly to vulnerable groups considered to be part of the purview of women's policing: prostitutes, runaways and wayward children among others. In accordance with the times, a 1933 Policewoman's Guidebook describes many of the routine details of a policewoman's work, which included: patrolling and questioning individuals such as lost children, "children in street trades," truants and runaways, unemployed and homeless women and girls, "sexual delinquents", women suffering from mental disorders, combatting the distribution of "salacious literature" and dealing with petty thieves and shoplifters. These tasks reflect the orientation towards moral reform that characterized women's roles in the policing profession in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The first policewomen in the United States included Marie Owens, who joined the Chicago Police department in 1891; Lola Baldwin, who was sworn in by the city of Portland in 1908; Fanny Bixby, also sworn into office in 1908 by the city of Long Beach, California; and Alice Stebbins Wells who was initiated into the Los Angeles Police Department in 1910. Mary D. Diehl and L. M. Gillespie then became two of the first women sworn in by the city of Philadelphia in 1913."Women Doing Good Work: On Police Duty With Masher Hunting Her Specialty." Grand Island, Nebraska: The Grand Island Daily Independent, May 2, 1913, p. 2 (subscription required)."Mrs. Mary Diehl." Oakland, California: Oakland Tribune, June 22, 1913, p. 30 (subscription required). Their hiring was announced in newspapers across the United States."Lady Copper On Job Now in Philadelphia: She Appears In The Regulation Blue Uniform Used By All The Policemen." Fort Wayne, Indiana: The Fort Wayne Daily News, May 2, 1913, p. 8 (subscription required)."These Women Are On The Police Force." Des Moines, Iowa: The Des Moines Evening Tribune, June 10, 1913, p. 7 (subscription required)."Women Policemen Added to Philadelphia's Force." Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: The Pittsburgh Post, April 18, 1913 p. 1 (subscription required).
The first African American policewomen to join the force include Cora Parchment, who was sworn into the New York Police Department, and Georgia Ann Robinson, who was sworn into the LAPD in 1919.
The first unofficial U.S. Secret Service female special agent was Florence Bolan. She joined the service in 1917. In 1924, Bolan was promoted to operative (the title preceding special agent) where she performed duties, such as searching female prisoners and engage in occasional fieldwork.
As time continued onward, the organized movement towards including more women in the police force began to diminish, even as the raw numbers of female police officers continued to grow. With the decrease in structural supports, women's roles in policing stagnated. From the 1930s until the early 1960s, women's roles were largely working as dispatchers, checking parking meters, and continuing to deal with women's and children's issues (i.e. questioning female witnesses and offenders). They also took on more clerical and support duties, and were less involved in the active investigation of crime. During the early 1960s, women began to agitate for diversity in their participation in the police workforce, especially as working class women began to enter the profession- the role of policewoman as moral reformer, social worker, or secretary no longer aligned with the changing demographics of female officers.
1960–1980: Tides of change Women began to take more official, standardized, and widespread roles in law enforcement at all levels during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, at the confluence of the second-wave feminist movement, national equal opportunity legislation, and changing economic structures. However, this progress often took place in police departments that still had policies that limited opportunities for women to take leadership roles and integrate fully into departmental work. Some of these changes came quickly, others more slowly over time. Firstly, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically Title VII, made it more difficult for men to discriminate against women in hiring and employment, a trend which extended to the police force. This change was also paired with the development of a presidential commission on law enforcement that developed policy recommendations including synthesis and connection between different agencies as well as the hiring of more minorities and women. This marked a shift in the federal government's orientation towards law enforcement, focusing on state and local police departments. In continuance with these goals, the Johnson Administration passed the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control Act and the Safe Streets Act of 1968. The Crime Control Act created the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) that worked to expand programs on criminal justice/law enforcement at grantee universities, part of a push towards professionalization of the field. Soon after, a 1973 edition of the Crime Control Act was passed, mandating that any educational institution that received LEAA funds could not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, or any other protected categories, and so many educational opportunities for women were developed in the criminal justice field during this time. This was also paired with an increase in prison populations, creating new demand for law enforcement officers at all levels. Also notable in the elimination of gender-based discrimination in police hiring was the 1971 Supreme Court decision Griggs v. Duke Power Company. This mandated that job descriptions include only essential expectations, drawing upon a "disparate impact" model. This opened up the door for suits against police departments who had height, weight, and other physical requirements, which were framed as discriminatory against women.
1980 onward: The "brass" ceiling and role definition Nearly 100,000 women are sworn police officers on the state, local, and national level. According to a study, women made up 5.0% of the police force in 1980. Data available from 1995 onward from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports keeps records of numbers of female and male police officers at all levels: local, state, and national, with local police departments keeping records and then reporting to the FBI. In 1995, 9.8% of sworn police officers were women. This number grew in the next decade; in 2005 female police officers made up 11.2% of all sworn police officers. One decade later, the number of policewomen has grown little, from 11.2% in 2005 to 11.9% in 2014.
This stagnation reflects some of the discussion in qualitative studies about attracting and retaining female police officers and their perceptions of advancement opportunity in law enforcement. Cordner and Cordner's 2011 investigation of this stagnation effect examines the various rationales provided by female police officers and their male counterparts in southeastern Pennsylvania. They conclude that there is significant divergence between what male police chiefs see as barriers to increasing female recruitment and women's perceptions of these self same barriers. Specifically, they find that women employees describe the police agencies as having a culture that is "male dominated," that there is a lack of family-friendly work policies, and that police agencies do not actively recruit female officers. Male police chiefs thought that physical examination standards and extra hiring points given to veterans make it difficult to recruit and hire female police officers. In fact, survey data from 62 police agencies have found that physical examinations do serve as a significant deterrent to female employment- those agencies that do not have a physical ability test have more female officers than those that use these tests. This same study argues that in order to grow closer to reaching gender parity in policing, it might be useful to eliminate physical agility testing, or perhaps include this testing after all recruits have completed police academy. All of these issues characterize the difficulties in addressing stagnating rates of female employment in criminal justice occupations.