Female Representation in Law Enforcement: The Influence of Screening,Unions,Incentives,Community Policing,CALEA,and Size

Abstract

Using data over 4,000 agencies, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of community, organization, and economic factors on the representation of women in law enforcement. The results highlight the influence that police executives and community leaders have on gender diversity by way of creating a greater demand for women in the profession. Higher levels of female officer representation were associated with organizations that emphasize community policing; have higher education requirements, more incentives and benefits, no physical fitness screening criteria, and no collective bargaining rights; belong to the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies; and serve larger and more racially and ethnical diverse communities.

Keywords

women in policing female representation gender diversity

In the fall of 2010, the history of women in policing was rewritten. Evidence uncovered by Rick Barrett, an amateur historian, suggested that Marie Owens was the first female police officer in the nation. In 1891, 18 years before Alice Stebbins Wells was sworn in as a Los Angeles police officer, Owens was transferred from the Chicago city health department to the Chicago police department and given the title of detective sergeant with arrest powers. Owens specialized in the enforcement of child labor laws. In a 1906 Chicago Tribune news article, Owens told reporters that she liked “to do police work” and that such employment provided her “a chance to help women and children who need help.” Owens described her experiences investigating the use of underage children in factories by commenting, “In my sixteen years of experience I have come across more suffering than ever is seen by any man detective” (Mastony, 2010, para. 17). She retired from the force in 1923 after 32 years with the department and received a pension of $83 dollars per month, which was half her normal pay. Owens died in 1927 at the age of 74.

Today, there are more than 82,418 full-time female police officers in the United States. This number represents approximately 11.8% of all officers (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], 2011). Many women have earned promotions into supervisory and leadership positions, and a few women have even ascended through the ranks to lead large, prominent law enforcement organizations, such as Cathy Lanier, Chief of Police of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, and Jane Caster, Chief of Police of the Tampa Police Department in Florida (Schulz, 2003, 2004).¹ However, the news is not all positive. Women remain underrepresented in law enforcement, particularly in medium-sized and small agencies, and the last 10 years of data suggest that policing organizations have made little progress in recruiting more women into the profession (Cordner & Cordner, 2011; Langton, 2010; for an international perspective, see Prenzler & Sinclair, 2013). For example, in 2011, approximately 58% of all women were in the labor force, and women accounted for more than 50% of all persons employed in management and professional occupations (BLS Reports, 2013). Furthermore, although male officers and the public have become more accepting of women as officers, many women continue to experience sexual harassment and discrimination as they progress through their law enforcement careers (Chan, Doran, & Marel, 2010; Prokos & Padavic, 2002).

Studying women in policing is important for many reasons. Drawing from the theory of representative bureaucracy, scholars argue that organizations will be more responsive to the public if they reflect the demographic characteristics of the individuals whom they serve (Krislov & Rosenbloom, 1981). Passive representation, or the mere presence of demographic diversity, is an “indicator of the organization’s commitment to equal opportunity and access to power and can promote the legitimacy of public bureaucracies” (Meier & Nicholson-Crotty, 2006, p. 851). Although largely symbolic, passive representation provides a pathway for citizens to feel empowered and connected to the government.

The purpose of the current study is twofold. The first goal is to evaluate the community, organization, and economic characteristics that may be related to the representation of women in law enforcement.² In addition to replicating aspects of earlier work, this study focuses on expanding our understanding of the distribution of female representation by introducing and testing indicators drawn from a diverse set of theoretical perspectives. The second goal is to develop a more comprehensive description of female employment patterns in U.S. law enforcement agencies. Most of what is known regarding women in policing is based on data generated by large municipal police departments (i.e., those with 100 or more full-time sworn officers). The current study expands on prior work by examining patterns not only in large agencies but also in medium-sized and small police departments and sheriff’s offices.

Background and Literature

Historically, scholars have organized factors associated with female representation in policing into two broad categories: environmental and institutional (Warner, Steel, & Lovrich, 1989; Zhao, Herbst, & Lovrich, 2001). Environmental characteristics are usually drawn from economic labor theories and include factors such as occupational demand, the supply of skilled workers, wages, government policies, and political climate. In contrast, institutional factors take into account the policies, procedures, and opportunities that are internal to the agency. While this classification system is useful, it is oversimplified because it fails to consider the dynamic, reciprocal relationships between policing agencies and the social context in which such organizations operate. Therefore, a modified framework is adopted in this study.

Drawing from the sociological literature on occupational sex segregation (Reskin, 1993) and the literature on labor market participation in neoclassical economics (Becker, 1957, 1964), factors associated with female representation in law enforcement can be classified in terms of supply (i.e., the availability of a qualified workforce) and demand (i.e., employer actions and practices), as well as conditions that are internal versus external to the law enforcement organization. Supply-side factors embedded in the broader social context, such as the level of women’s overall participation in the labor market, are hypothesized to affect the ability of law enforcement agencies to recruit and retain highly qualified women. In addition, practices that are internal to the organization, such as specific recruiting or screening practices, may disproportionately affect women’s decisions to enter the policing profession (Jordan, Fridell, Faggiani, & Kubu, 2009). The framework used to organize the literature and guide the analyses is presented in Figure 1. In the following sections, specific factors believed to be associated with female representation are reviewed and described in greater detail.

Figure 1.

Framework for understanding female representation in law enforcement.

Community Supply: Workforce Participation and Egalitarian Culture

Two of the strongest predictors of female representation in law enforcement are the population of the jurisdiction served by the agency and the racial and ethnic diversity of the community. Findings from research studies conducted by scholars over the past 30 years have consistently shown that female officers are more likely to be employed in agencies that serve large metropolitan jurisdictions rather than smaller municipalities or rural areas (Hochstedler & Conley, 1986; Langton, 2010; Schroedel, Frisch, Hallamore, Peterson, & Vanderhorst, 1996; Warner et al., 1989; Zhao, He, & Lovrich, 2006). Furthermore, a greater percentage of female officers are found in communities with more racial and ethnic diversity than in those with less diversity (Hochstedler, Regoli, & Poole, 1984; Lewis, 1989; Martin, 1991; Zhao et al., 2006).

In theory, community size and diversity are linked to increased levels of female representation through the mechanisms of higher rates of female labor force participation and a more pervasive egalitarian climate (Cotter, DeFiore, Hermsen, Kowalewski, & Vanneman, 1998). For example, law enforcement organizations in large metropolitan areas generally have access to a larger, better-educated pool of qualified women who could be recruited into the profession compared with agencies in smaller communities or more geographically isolated areas (Warner et al., 1989). In addition to population and racial and ethnic diversity, sociologists have identified higher levels of female educational attainment, decreased participation in the institution of marriage, and lower fertility rates as three of the largest predictors of more women entering the workforce and increasing occupational equality between women and men (Cotter et al., 1998; Huber & Spitze, 1983; Oppenheimer, 1973). Based on the supply size, the following hypotheses are made:

Hypothesis 1: Higher levels of female representation will be associated with law enforcement organizations that serve larger communities and communities that have a more racially and ethnically diverse population.

Hypothesis 2: Higher levels of female representation will be associated with law enforcement organizations that serve communities characterized by high levels of female educational attainment and low fertility and marriage rates.

Hypothesis 3: Egalitarian climate and female participation in the labor market will mediate the relationship between the hypothesized community characteristics and female officer representation.

Internal Demand: Organizational Practices and Policies

Regarding factors that are internal to law enforcement organizations, the policies and practices in an agency can affect gender diversity by creating (directly or indirectly) a demand for more women. The most salient example of this phenomenon is an organization’s commitment to embracing the principles of community policing. Although there is no universal definition, most scholars agree that community policing is a philosophy that emphasizes community problem-solving and empowerment, as well as an organizational commitment to aligning resources and management systems with the missions of community engagement and collaborative problem-solving (Goldstein, 1990; Wilson & Kelling, 1982). Community policing creates a demand for more women because it emphasizes an organization’s commitment to equality and access for all residents. Furthermore, one of the central tenets during the community-policing era has been the pursuit of workforce diversity. Hiring more female and minority officers is a high priority because an increase in diversity is viewed as an important indicator of organizational change.

There is a growing body of literature that highlights the importance of personnel practices on female representation. Certain aspects of the employment screening process, such as physical fitness tests, are believed to disproportionately affect female applicants and reduce the pool of qualified women eligible to be hired (Lonsway, 2003). It is estimated that over 80% of state and 65% of city agencies use some form of physical fitness or agility test to screen out applicants (Ash, Slora, & Britton, 1990; Gaines, Falkenberg, & Gambino, 1993; Townsey, 1992). In a study of a Midwest police department, Birzer and Craig (1996) found that over a 9-year period, only 28% of the female applicants passed the physical ability test compared with 93% of the men. As early as the 1990s, law enforcement leaders were voicing concerns about attracting a sufficient number of qualified candidates. To expand the applicant pool, a few organizations loosened screening requirements by lowering the education attainment criteria and not disqualifying applicants who had minor criminal or drug use histories (Jordan et al., 2009). Unfortunately, there is little information on how these changes have affected female applicants and the representation of women in law enforcement.

Another potential factor that influences female representation is the presence of a collective bargaining unit (Riccucci, 1986). Historically, police unions have represented the interests of White officers (Walker, 1985), and during the 1970s and 1980s, a number of union leaders openly opposed government-sponsored affirmative action programs (Walker, 1985; Warner et al., 1989). The empirical evidence regarding the impact of unions is mixed. Warner et al. (1989) did not find an association between unionization and female representation in their study of 281 metropolitan police departments. However, Sass and Troyer (1999) used a larger and more diverse sample of agencies and found that unionization was associated with less female officer representation during the early 1980s but not during the late 1980s or early 1990s. Based on the organization demand domain, the following hypotheses are made:

Hypothesis 4: Higher levels of female representation will be associated with law enforcement organizations that have a greater commitment to community policing.

Hypothesis 5: Law enforcement organizations with physical fitness screening criteria will have lower levels of female representation than those without physical fitness screening criteria.

Hypothesis 6: Higher female representation will be associated with law enforcement organizations that have lower education requirements.

Hypothesis 7: Law enforcement organizations with a collective bargaining unit will have lower levels of female representation than those that do not have a collective bargaining unit.

External Demand: The Social Structural Context

Entities that represent the community or special interest groups within the community can pressure law enforcement agencies to diversity their workforce and thus create demand for more women. For example, external pressure to increase workforce diversity has been applied on several departments through consent decrees or settlements related to lawsuits. Research from the National Center for Women and Policing suggests that consent decrees and other court-order reforms are associated with greater levels of female representation. Additionally, scholars determined that once the legal requirements were removed, female representation declined (Lonsway et al., 2003).

Participation in the accreditation process governed by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) is another example of an external agency that has created demand for more female officers. CALEA was formed in 1979 with the goal of improving law enforcement organizations by developing a body of standards that organizations could use to gauge their performance (CALEA, 1999). One important element of CALEA membership is the formalization of standards. If a department’s workforce is not as diverse as the labor force in the community that the department serves, the agency is required to develop equal opportunity and affirmative action recruitment plans to receive accreditation (CALEA, 1999). Using data from 394 large municipal, state, and county law enforcement organizations, Burlingame and Baro (2005) found that participation in CALEA was associated with greater female officer representation and more female officers serving in supervisory and command roles. Based on the community demand domain, the following hypotheses are made:

Hypothesis 8: Law enforcement organizations under a consent decree or court-ordered settlement will have higher levels of female representation than those organizations that are not bound by court-ordered mandates.

Hypothesis 9: Law enforcement organizations that belong to CALEA will have higher levels of female representation than those that do not belong to CALEA.

Microeconomics: Salary and Benefits

In theory, there should be greater demand for female labor when such labor is cheaper than male labor, assuming the costs of employing men and women are considered to be equal. However, these calculations are complicated by the fact that many public sector jobs, such as law enforcement, operate under an incentives model whereby lower wages are supplemented with benefits such as low-cost comprehensive health-care coverage or a good pension plan. Female officers often discuss the merits of benefits such as liberal maternity-leave policies (e.g., see Cordner & Cordner, 2011; Seklecki & Paynich, 2007). However, there is little research on the degree to which these types of incentives influence young women’s decisions to enter policing. Based on the microeconomics perspective, the following hypotheses are made:

Hypothesis 10: Higher levels of female representation will be associated with law enforcement organizations in which women gain a smaller economic benefit in terms of salary relative to men in the community.

Hypothesis 11: Higher levels of female representation will be associated with law enforcement organizations that provide their employees with a greater number of benefits and incentives.

Data and Methods

Data

The data for this study came from several sources, including the 2007 and 2003 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) surveys (United States Department of Justice, 2006, 2011a), the 2008 Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies (CSLLEA) survey (United States Department of Justice, 2011b), the 2005–2009 American Communities Survey (with 5-year estimates) (United States Census Bureau, 2011), the CALEA (2003, 2007) annual reports, and the National Center for Women and Policing’s report on consent decrees (Lonsway et al., 2003). The majority of the data, including information on the percentage of female officers in each agency and the characteristics of law enforcement organizations, was compiled from LEMAS. LEMAS is a cross-sectional survey of state and local law enforcement agencies conducted every 3 to 4 years by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and it includes information on expenditures, personnel, operations, initiatives, equipment, and policies. The sample is designed to be nationally representative. It includes a set of self-representing agencies (those with 100 or more sworn police officers) and a group of non-self-representing agencies (those with fewer than 100 sworn officers), which are selected using a cluster sampling design.

Five important modifications were made to the data. First, to have sufficient power to test hypotheses using medium-sized and small agencies, the 2007 LEMAS data were supplemented with data from agencies that were not selected or did not respond in 2007 but were selected and did respond in 2003. The original 2007 LEMAS sample included 2,875 cases. An additional 1,674 cases from the 2003 sample were added for a total of 4,549 cases. Second, organizations were excluded if they did not perform policing functions. Using information from the CSLLEA survey, agencies were excluded if they did not provide the following services: (a) first response to criminal incidents, (b) routine patrol services, (c) response to citizen requests for services, and (d) arresting criminal suspects. Fourth, because LEMAS collects gender information for only full-time personnel, agencies had to have at least one full-time sworn officer to be included in the study. Finally, because of the small number of agencies, any remaining state law enforcement organizations and tribal police departments were excluded. The final sample size included a total of 4,241 agencies.

To provide information on the stability of female representation over the past decade, information regarding the percentage of female officers compiled from LEMAS for all of the agencies that performed policing functions in 2003 and 2007 is presented in Table 1. This table includes data reported from 2,669 agencies in 2007 and 2,644 agencies in 2003. A total of 1,104 agencies are self-representing and contributed information on the level of gender diversity for their organization in both years. As can be observed in Table 1, female representation changed little from 2003 to 2007. Gender diversity was somewhat greater in sheriff’s offices versus police departments, particularly when agencies with 25 or more sworn officers were compared. This difference may be attributable to the fact that many larger sheriff’s offices provide personnel to operate detention facilities and are pressured to recruit women to monitor female inmates. However, overall, the differences were small. The size of the organization was strongly correlated with female officer representation. Larger organizations had greater gender diversity and were much more likely to have at least one sworn female officer compared with smaller organizations. This outcome was true for both police departments and sheriff’s offices.

Table 1.

Descriptive Information for the Percentage of Female Officers in Law Enforcement Agencies for the Years 2007 and 2003.

2007					2003
n	M	SD	Maximum	No females (%)	n	M	SD	Maximum	No females (%)
Police departments
Mega (1,000 or more officers)	46	15.3	7.5	27.2	0.0	46	15.2	4.3	26.1	0.0
Large (100–999)	513	10.4	4.7	33.5	0.0	516	9.6	4.5	33.9	0.2
Medium (25–99)	633	8.1	5.1	34.6	5.4	608	7.5	4.8	28.0	6.6
Small (less than 25)	698	6.3	9.6	75.0	54.6	697	5.3	9.1	100.0	60.3
Sheriff’s offices
Mega (1,000 or more officers)	13	15.8	5.7	28.0	0.0	13	15.5	3.7	24.0	0.0
Large (100–999)	243	12.8	6.7	39.8	0.4	236	12.7	6.6	41.0	0.4
Medium (25–99)	185	8.4	6.4	34.6	8.6	198	8.7	7.0	41.7	9.1
Small (less than 25)	338	4.8	7.4	50.0	57.1	330	5.1	7.9	46.9	60.6

Measures

The measures for this study are described in Table 2. Community characteristics were measured at the county level for all law enforcement agencies. The racial and ethnic diversity index represents the likelihood that two individuals selected at random from the county will be members of different racial or ethnic groups (Economic and Social Research Institute [ESRI], 2012). A value of 0 indicates no racial or ethnic diversity, whereas a value of 1 indicates complete diversity. Six racial groups (White, Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and other), one multiple race group (two or more races), and one ethnic group (Hispanic vs. non-Hispanic) were used to calculate the measure.³ Egalitarian climate was measured using the Duncans’ D occupational segregation index (Duncan & Duncan, 1955). Note that the measure was calculated excluding the protective services category because this occupational category includes law enforcement professions. The measure represents the percentage of women who would have to change jobs for the distribution of women and men to be equal across occupations. To facilitate interpretation, the measure was subtracted from one so that greater values indicate less occupational sex segregation, that is, a more egalitarian climate.⁴

Table 2.

Definitions and Descriptive Statistics for Dependent and Independent Variables.

Police (N = 2,863)		Sheriffs (N = 1,143)
Variables	Definition and coding	M	SD	M	SD
Percentage of female officers	Percentage of full-time sworn female officers (logged)	1.68	1.10	1.66	1.18
Population	Population of the jurisdiction (logged)	9.56	1.57	10.56	1.57
Racial/ethnic diversity	Probability that two people selected at random will be from a different racial or ethnic background	.42	.21	.32	.20
College educated	Percentage of women with at least a college degree	25.57	9.77	19.49	7.93
Married women	Percentage of women married	49.77	6.10	53.18	7.14
Fertility rate	Rate of women who gave birth in past 12 months	56.09	12.73	57.89	19.74
Female labor force participation	Percentage of women who held a full-time job in the past year	72.41	5.29	70.51	7.38
Egalitarian climate	Occupational sex segregation index for all occupations excluding protective services (reversed)	−43.61	7.42	−50.72	8.89
Consent decree	0 = no; 1 = yes	.01	.07	.01	.07
CALEA membership	0 = no; 1 = yes	.10	.30	.05	.23
Community policing	Number of initiatives; range 0 to 8	3.48	2.63	2.29	2.23
Education requirement	0 = high school degree or less; 1 = more than a high school degree; 2 = some college; 3 = two year degree; 4 = four year degree	1.33	.73	1.18	.58
Physical fitness test	0 = no; 1 = yes	.70	.46	.51	.50
Collective bargaining	0 = no; 1 = yes	.55	.50	.30	.46
Salary	Ratio of how much more on average female officers will make relative to median salaries in the county versus male officers	1.51	.18	1.57	.24
Incentives and benefits	Number of incentives and benefits; range 0 to 8	2.34	1.74	1.53	1.68
Operate jail	0 = no; 1 = yes	.15	.36	.80	.40
Data from 2003	0 = data from 2007; 1 = data from 2003	.38	.49	.38	.49
Small-sized agency	0 = otherwise; 1 = 24 or fewer full-time sworn officers	.48	.50	.43	.50
Medium-sized agency	0 = otherwise; 1 = 25 to 99 full-time sworn officers	.28	.45	.36	.48

Note. CALEA = Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.

Regarding organizational measures, the community policing variable indicates the number of community policing-related activities that the agency reported performing in the year prior to the survey’s administration. The following eight activities were included: a community policing mission statement, active encouragement of patrol officers to engage in SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment)-type problem-solving, the creation or maintenance of a formal written community policing plan, running a citizen police academy, patrol officers responsible for specific geographic areas/beats, the inclusion of collaborative problem-solving projects in the evaluation criteria for patrol officers, upgraded technology to support the analysis of community policing strategies, and partnered with citizen groups and included citizen feedback in the development of community policing strategies.

Salary is the ratio of how much more or less the average officer salary is compared with the average pay for women versus men in the county. A value of 1 indicates that women and men enjoy the same economic benefit. Higher values indicate that law enforcement jobs in the county offer greater monetary benefit to women in terms of salary compared with men.⁵ The measure for incentives and benefits is an eight-item scale that includes a count of the following items: education incentive pay, hazardous duty pay, shift differential pay, special skills proficiency pay, bilingual ability pay, tuition reimbursement, military service pay, and residential incentive pay.

The variable jail was included to control for whether an agency was responsible for operating a detention facility. Information on this measure was collected from the CSLLEA survey. Inconsistent reporting for personnel assigned to detention facilities has been identified as a problem when analyzing female representation in sheriff’s offices (Cordner & Cordner, 2011).

To capture the size of the agency, two indicator variables were included in the models. The measure small was coded 1 for agencies with fewer than 25 sworn full-time officers and 0 otherwise, and the measure medium was coded 1 for agencies with 25 to 99 sworn full-time officers and 0 otherwise. Large agencies (i.e., those with 100 or more sworn full-time officers) were used as the comparison group.

Methods

The hypotheses were tested with multivariate regression using Stata 12 (StataCorp, 2011). The data from the 4,241 agencies (62% from 2007 and 38% from 2003) were screened for problems using procedures outlined by Tabachnick and Fidell (2007). Thirty-three departments did not provide information regarding the gender distribution of their employees. The variable with the most missing values was salary, which had 226 missing cases (approximately 5%). Less than 1% of the values were missing for the remaining independent variables. The percentage of female officers and the population of the jurisdiction were logarithmically transformed to reduce skewness.⁶

Police departments and sheriff’s offices were evaluated separately for two reasons. First, some scholars argue that county law enforcement agencies are theoretically different from municipal police departments (Falcone & Wells, 1995). Second, the data are clustered in counties for police departments but not for sheriff’s offices. To decrease the potential for biased standard errors because of the clustered nature of the data, the model for police departments was estimated by taking into account the nonindependence of observations using Stata 12 (StataCorp, 2011). The difference between estimates for police departments and sheriff’s offices was evaluated using procedures outlined by Paternoster, Brame, Mazerolle, and Piquero (1998).

Results

Bivariate Relationships

The bivariate correlations for the study measures are presented in Table 3. The correlation matrix for police departments is shown in the bottom left of the table, and the matrix for sheriff’s offices in the top right. Consistent with prior findings, the percentage of female officers was strongly related to the population served by the agency and the racial and ethnic diversity of the community. Further, the percentage of female officers was associated with the percentage of women in the county with a college degree, lower marriage rates, and a more egalitarian climate. Interestingly, female labor force participation was associated with greater female officer representation for police departments but not for sheriff’s offices. Both of the external demand factors (consent decree and CALEA membership) were associated with female officer representation. All of the organizational factors were associated with female officer representation except for physical fitness tests required by sheriff’s offices.

Table 3.

Correlation Matrix for Police Departments (bottom left side, N = 2,863) and Sheriff’s Offices (top right side, N = 1,143).

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18
1. Female officers	.49	.29	.24	−.22	.02	.01	.36	.07	.17	.32	.08	.05	.09	−.13	.36	.19	−.12
2. Population	.51	.40	.48	−.43	−.02	.06	.77	.17	.29	.53	.11	.31	.30	−.25	.58	.24	−.27
3. Racial/ethnic diversity	.29	.40	.16	−.48	.16	−.23	.25	.08	.11	.26	−.11	.02	−.09	−.20	.27	.14	−.16
4. College educated	.22	.36	.24	−.09	−.15	.41	.62	.09	.18	.37	.12	.23	.18	−.13	.39	.06	−.21
5. Married women	−.20	−.30	−.50	−.16	.04	.20	−.37	−.05	−.07	−.17	.06	−.07	−.06	.31	−.19	−.10	.07
6. Fertility rate	.01	.01	.18	−.27	.12	.01	−.09	−.02	−.02	−.04	−.03	.01	−.08	.10	−.05	.06	−.03
7. Female labor force	.04	.13	−.17	.50	.04	−.20	.22	.01	.04	.01	.24	.07	.25	−.05	.10	.05	−.06
8. Egalitarian climate	.29	.51	.44	.77	−.47	−.22	.37	.10	.22	.43	.12	.26	.29	−.35	.47	.16	−.21
9. Consent decree	.07	.15	.05	.05	−.07	−.01	.02	.06	.04	.10	−.02	.07	.06	−.04	.15	.04	−.06
10. CALEA membership	.23	.34	.12	.14	−.13	−.01	.07	.19	.06	.34	.01	.12	.06	−.10	.28	.02	−.19
11. Community policing	.39	.59	.31	.28	−.20	−.01	.10	.38	.08	.33	.09	.21	.18	−.13	.48	.08	−.18
12. Education requirement	.10	.13	.01	.17	−.02	−.03	.23	.15	−.02	.11	.13	.06	.29	.02	.07	.07	−.06
13. Physical fitness test	.14	.37	.07	.19	−.10	−.07	.11	.21	.05	.11	.27	.08	.22	.02	.33	−.04	−.26
14. Collective bargaining	.10	.34	.08	.31	−.14	−.16	.27	.35	.02	−.01	.16	.19	.24	.01	.38	.15	−.07
15. Salary	−.19	−.27	−.47	−.22	.49	.06	−.11	−.49	−.04	−.15	−.25	−.02	−.02	−.03	−.12	.05	.06
16. Incentives / benefits	.36	.60	.32	.27	−.17	−.03	.06	.37	.06	.21	.48	.05	.28	.27	−.23	.13	−.22
17. Operate jail	.06	.15	.22	.08	−.14	.05	−.06	.15	.03	−.02	.06	−.01	.09	.07	−.09	.09	−.01
18. Data 2003	−.21	−.31	−.16	−.09	.11	−.02	.02	−.14	−.04	−.14	−.21	−.04	−.20	−.04	.10	−.23	−.06

Note. CALEA =Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. Statistically significant correlations are given in bold font (p < .05).

Additionally, the results reveal several interesting relationships among the independent variables. Consistent with the literature on occupational sex segregation, population, and racial and ethnic diversity, education and marriage were associated with labor force participation and egalitarian climate, as hypothesized. As suggested by Walker (2008), collective bargaining was associated with a variety of personnel practices, such as physical fitness and education requirements, as well as incentives and benefits.

Multivariate Models

The results for the multivariate regression models are presented in Table 4. The percentage of women with a college degree was removed from the model estimated for police departments because of concerns regarding multicollinearity (r = .77 with egalitarian climate). The remaining variables were evaluated as hypothesized. Regarding police departments, female officer representation was related to the size of the population served and the racial and ethnic diversity of the community. None of the other community-level factors were significant. If labor force participation and egalitarian climate operated as mediators for the relationship between female representation and population and diversity, we would expect them to have been significant. Additionally, we would have expected the effects of population and diversity to be smaller than the effect sizes estimated from the bivariate correlations. Because neither expectation occurred, these results cast doubt on the proposed mediators most commonly outlined in the literature on occupational sex segregation (i.e., hypothesis 3).

Table 4.

Regression Estimates for Female Representation Models.

	Police departments (N = 2,863)			Sherriff’s offices (N = 1,143)
	B	SE	Beta	B	SE	Beta
Population	.241***	.029	.343	.132**	.043	.175
Racial/ethnic diversity	.431**	.144	.080	.326	.191	.055
College educated	NA	NA	NA	−.002	.005	−.013
Married women	−.004	.005	−.020	.001	.005	.005
Fertility rate	−.001	.002	−.010	.002	.002	.029
Female labor force	−.001	.005	−.001	−.001	.005	−.008
Egalitarian climate	.001	.005	.008	.002	.006	.014
Consent decree	.101	.114	.005	−.002	.411	−.001
CALEA membership	.152***	.040	.044	−.029	.141	−.006
Community policing	.043***	.008	.104	.023	.016	.044
Education requirement	.070**	.025	.036	.272*	.099	.073
Physical fitness test	−.147**	.047	−.062	−.219**	.065	−.092
Collective bargaining	−.166***	.042	−.073	−.157*	.077	−.061
Salary	.080	.147	.013	−.045	.136	−.009
Incentives / benefits	.035*	.014	.054	.064**	.024	.091
Operate jail	−.092*	.049	−.029	.179*	.078	.060
Data from 2003	−.145**	.040	−.065	.009	.065	.004
Small (vs. large)	−.058	.094	−.024	−.894***	.136	−.378
Medium (vs. large)	.216***	.048	.095	−.244*	.105	−.092
R² = .30			R² = .31

Note. SE = standard error; CALEA = Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. Standard errors for police departments are adjusted estimates that take into account nonindependence due to clustering. Percentage of women college educated was not included for police departments because it was highly correlated (r = .77, p < .001) with egalitarian climate.

Regarding organizational demand factors, agencies with a greater commitment to community policing had more female officers than agencies with few community policing initiatives. Higher education requirements were associated with more gender diversity, whereas physical fitness tests were associated with less gender diversity. As expected, organizations with more benefits and incentives had greater female representation than those with fewer benefits and incentives. Interestingly, collective bargaining had a direct negative impact on gender diversity.

Regarding the results for sheriff’s offices, several interesting findings emerged. The population of the jurisdiction, education requirements, physical fitness requirements, collective bargaining, and benefits were all significantly related to female officer representation for sheriff’s offices. As expected, operating a jail was strongly related to greater levels of female representation. Interestingly, the racial and ethnic diversity of the community, CALEA membership, and community policing was not significantly related to female representation for sheriff’s offices. However, only the estimates for population (z = −2.10, p = .036), education requirement (z = 1.98, p = .048), operating a jail (z = 2.94, p = .003), small agency (vs. large) (z = −5.06, p < .001), medium-sized agency (vs. large) (z = −3.98, p < .001), and data from 2003 (z = 2.02, p = .043) were significantly different between sheriff’s offices and police departments.

Discussions and Conclusions

The purpose of this study was to evaluate organizational, economic, and community factors related to the representation of women in law enforcement. Using data collected from over 4,000 law enforcement agencies, the analyses yielded mixed support for the hypothesized correlates. Similar to earlier research findings, organizational policies and practices appear to have a greater impact on the representation of women in law enforcement than community factors, such as the number of women in the labor force or gender segregation in occupations outside law enforcement. This point is important because much of the discussion regarding female representation in law enforcement addresses the challenges and barriers to recruiting more women into the profession, and this discussion is often framed in the context of individual choice versus policies and practices that produce sex segregation.

Is the low representation of female officers in law enforcement a function of women choosing not to pursue careers in policing, or is it a function of cultural and structural barriers that prevent women from entering the occupation? In their qualitative study of all female officers and male police chiefs in 68 separate police agencies in three counties in Pennsylvania, Cordner and Cordner (2011, p. 213) found that the reason most frequently cited by police chiefs for the low number of female recruits was that “women here have other employment options that are more attractive,” whereas the top reason cited by female officers was that “police agencies here don’t recruit women very proactively.”

The individual choice versus policies and practices distinction is often used to frame the female representation discussion. However, most scholars would agree that this distinction is a false dichotomy and that occupational selection is a complex combination of individual decision making, early socialization experiences regarding work and career expectations, and the timing and nature of specific employment opportunities. However, results from this study highlight the impact that law enforcement leaders could have on female representation by creating a greater demand for women in their agencies through policies and practices.

Findings from this study reaffirm the negative impact of physical fitness requirements on female representation in law enforcement. Departments that use physical fitness requirements to screen applicants have less gender diversity than departments that do not use these screening requirements. Some of the more common types of physical fitness tests include sit-and-reach, sit-ups, a 1.5-mile run, push-ups, and measuring oxygen intake using a stationary bicycle or treadmill (Lonsway, 2003). Physical fitness requirements are controversial because there is little empirical evidence that these tests are (a) reflective of the most common tasks that officers are expected to perform, (b) predictive of performance when coping with hostile or noncompliant citizens, and (c) associated with fewer negative organizational outcomes, such as the cost of employee health care or absenteeism. In the future, law enforcement leaders should collect data regarding the tests that they use and evaluate the relationships between their physical fitness standards and possible positive and negative outcomes. If such relationships cannot be documented, leaders should consider omitting the physical agility requirements altogether or changing to an evaluation based on general health. If such relationships exist, policing executives should focus on increasing the pool of qualified female applicants by helping women prepare for agility tests. One possible strategy might involve partnering with local colleges or universities to offer law enforcement-focused physical training classes.

Higher educational requirements were associated with more female representation. Rather than being viewed as a hurdle, educational requirements may be attractive to women because of the commonly held association between education and professionalism. Education requirements may signal to women that the organization is more professional and that it will facilitate a career trajectory consistent with middle-class expectations. This finding is important because, as stated earlier, many law enforcement executives are concerned about attracting a sufficient number of qualified candidates, and they view screening requirements as potential barriers to achieving this goal. However, this study’s findings suggest that lowering the education requirement may have an unintended negative effect on gender diversity. Changing the education requirement may increase the pool of qualified applicants. However, such a change may also decrease the number of women actually hired by the agency.⁷

Consistent with the research of Burlingame and Baro (2005), participation in the CALEA accreditation process was related to greater gender diversity for police departments. This finding is important because it is unlikely that organizations join CALEA for the purpose of increasing gender diversity. Rather, the association is most likely a by-product of the formalization of the strategic planning process regarding the recruitment of women and the commitment to equal opportunities for female employees. This phenomenon is a classic example of the saying “if you measure it, it matters.”

For both police departments and sheriff’s offices, collective bargaining rights were associated with less gender diversity. In his 2008 article, Walker named police unions as one of the most important influences in American policing. However, there is little research on how unions influence modern law enforcement agencies. In theory, unions can influence law enforcement agencies by affecting the management, accountability, subculture, community–police relations, and finances of these organizations (Walker, 2008). Sass and Troyer (1999) suggested that police unions affect gender diversity by shaping personnel practices, such as by advocating for physical fitness standards. However, the findings in this study suggest that unionization has an impact independent of physical fitness and educational requirements. Unions tend to protect the interests of their members, and in the case of law enforcement, their members are overwhelmingly male. However, the question still remains, how do unions influence female officer representation? More research is required to understand how collective bargaining affects gender diversity.

This study’s findings suggest that protective services occupations, including law enforcement, significantly contribute to occupational sex segregation in the United States and that the most common theories used to explain occupational sex segregation do not appear to apply to law enforcement. At a practical level, these results suggest that scholars and policing executives should develop new models for identifying the communities to target for recruiting. In the most comprehensive study to date, which included approximately 200 organizations, Jordan et al. (2009) found that more female hires were associated with organizations that had larger recruiting budgets, a larger number of open positions, and recruiting strategies targeted toward women. While this information is useful, increasing female representation remains a challenge, especially for smaller organizations and agencies with limited resources.

One possible reason for low levels of female representation in small law enforcement organizations may be related to the role of social networks in obtaining employment. In the private sector, the importance of social networks has been well documented, and scholars estimate that upwards of 50% of all jobs are obtained through social contacts (Calvo-Armengol & Jackson, 2004). Regarding employment in law enforcement occupations, the influence of social networks is most likely less than in the private sector because of legal requirements and the resulting formalized recruitment and screening procedures. Nevertheless, social networks most likely continue to influence the selection of new officers, particularly in smaller agencies in which there are fewer resources to commit to a formalized recruitment process that is maintained, even when new officers are not being selected.

In theory, social networks may influence the composition of the applicant pool in several ways: (a) alerting friends to potential employment opportunities before they are formally announced, thereby providing them with more time to prepare; (b) encouraging friends to apply, introducing them to colleagues, and thus helping applicants visualize the occupation and their chances of success in the agency more completely; (c) contextualizing formal materials from the agency and helping the applicant prepare for the screening process; and finally, (d) informally influencing decision makers by providing them with firsthand information on the applicant’s character and potential. The social network may have a greater influence on hiring decisions in small compared with large agencies because in smaller organizations, there is a greater need for collaboration among all workers, and leaders possess fewer means for isolating dysfunctional employees.

Law enforcement leaders should consider addressing the influence of social networks in one of two ways. First, they might consider decreasing the influence of social contacts by pooling resources across several agencies and offering the application and screening process at regular intervals. For example, it might be desirable to implement an annual testing process at the state level that would produce an applicant pool for all law enforcement agencies across the region. Further, states could partner with local colleges to provide a more comprehensive recruitment and screening process that included evaluating applicants on the skills necessary for successful career trajectories in the modern era of policing, such as strategic and analytic thinking, collaboration, problem-solving, emotional intelligence, cultural competence, and the mastery of technology (see Scrivner, 2006). Second, law enforcement leaders should consider leveraging social networks to help recruit women into the profession and increase the number of qualified women applying for jobs. Law enforcement leaders could implement mentoring programs and partner with other agencies to leverage female officers’ social networks to expose more women to the policing occupation. Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Google Plus+, could be used to help connect female officers to future candidates.

Consistent with the principles that embody community policing, those agencies with a greater commitment to community engagement and problem-solving had higher levels of female representation than those organizations that were less focused on community policing. However, the relationship was only significant for police departments. Although these results support the relationship between community policing and workforce diversity, the question remains: How are they connected? Do executives promote the hiring of more women through policies such as affirmative action plans, or are women more likely to choose the policing profession because the agency that they are considering policing philosophy?

One goal of this study was to develop a more comprehensive description of female employment patterns in U.S. law enforcement agencies by expanding the scope of the research beyond the study of large municipal police departments. Thus, patterns of female officer representation were evaluated in over 1,000 sheriff’s offices. Generally, there were more similarities between sheriff’s offices and police departments than there were differences. The two notable exceptions include the influence of agency size and the impact of employment screening criteria. One possible reason for these differences may be related to the fact that large sheriff’s offices traditionally handle a wide range of activities and thus must recruit individuals for a variety of personnel roles, including managing the county jail, processing of judicial writs and court orders, and the provision of court security.

Inevitably, this study has limitations. The quality of the organizational data provided in the LEMAS survey is unknown and most likely varies across agencies. Correlates were limited to data that were available, and a number of important indicators of female representation are missing from the models. Female representation is a function of both recruiting and retention, and in this study it was not possible to determine how the hypothesized factors affect each dimension separately. In prior research, scholars have identified personnel practices that encourage a better work–life balance (Cordner & Cordner, 2011) and a culture that is more accepting of women and of women supporting women (Rabe-Hemp, 2009; Waddington, 1999) as the most salient factors in the retention of female officers. Finally, prior research highlights the unique experiences of minority female officers, and unfortunately, because of changes in the LEMAS survey, the correlates cannot be evaluated in terms of minority female representation.

Policy Implications and Future Research

Progress has been made over the past 40 years in recruiting more women into the policing profession. Female representation in law enforcement has increased to approximately 12% in 2011 from approximately 2% in 1971 (Martin, 1991). However, the percentage of female officers is far less than the percentage of women in the workforce, and most scholars agree that gender diversity in policing has plateaued, remaining at approximately 11% for the past 10 years (Cordner & Corder, 2011). Understanding the employment of women in policing is important because in democratic societies, the presence of gender diversity is related to the goals of equal employment opportunities and social equality (Stivers, 2002). Further, many scholars and policy makers believe that greater gender diversity is associated with fewer negative occupational experiences and more positive career trajectories for women (see Kanter, 1977).

In the future, LEMAS should include additional items relevant to understanding the employment of women in policing, such as the number of women in supervisory roles, recruiting practices and policies regarding family leave, part-time opportunities, and other benefits and incentives. In addition, the LEMAS survey should be expanded to collect data on equal opportunity plans and the reasons why women leave law enforcement agencies. Finally, more resources should be devoted to research on how gender diversity can be increased in law enforcement organizations. A better understanding of the issues facing women is needed to develop practices, policies, and organizational climates that support successful career trajectories for women in law enforcement. Police executives need more information on best practices as they relate to the training, supervision, and mentoring of female officers. Only through the systematic collection and evaluation of information will we gain a better understanding of the causes and consequences of female representation in law enforcement.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Amie M. Schuck, PhD in Criminal Justice, is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her areas of research interest include community–police relations, women as administers of justice, youth attitudes toward the police, quantitative methodology, and public safety technologies.

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