“Suck It Up, Buttercup”: Understanding and Overcoming Gender Disparities in Policing
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Recruitment and Procedures
2.2. Participants
2.3. Qualitative Analyses
3. Results
3.1. Internal Discrimination
When I first got hired, I had one of my sergeants tell me […] he said: “Just so you know, I’m a sexist, like don’t be offended by it, but I’m a sexist”.(Woman 4)
So, I mean in terms of like, the promotions…like there’s always someone who has to decide whether you get the job or not, right. Like even the promotion level, you’ve got like your test that you write which, that’s black and white, but then you’ve got your assessment from your sergeant and you have your assessment from your inspector. So all of those things, its all, you know it’s all biased in a sense right? Whether they like you or don’t like you, or you know. […] It’s harder for women because there’s a fine line between being assertive and then everyone thinking that you’re a bitch and that kinda thing. So does that affect your future stuff? Probably.(Woman 5)
So a supervisor who calls units to come to the call, but the first three people that show up are female, and then when the next group of people show up, they’re all male, he sends the females on their way, right. So those, I remember those standing out to me like: “I can’t believe this is even happening, we’re all trained and I’m actually a better shot than that guy.” And like, you just start thinking of things and then that creates that self-doubt, right. And so then a lot of us are stubborn and will push back and prove, but I feel like there’s more onus on us to prove our ability in the job, to stay in shape, to be a good shooter, to have like all that training under your belt.(Woman 2)
My […] boss’s boss of the unit at the time, kind of welcomed me to the unit but it was a really like hypocritical like: “Welcome to the unit, but [emphasis] I don’t think you should be here. And want you to get as much opportunity as possible but [emphasis] take all the vacation you want and like if you need to go and like want to go on vacation, go ahead”. Like it was kind of like a conflicting, like, glad you’re here, but not really kind of thing […] had that been a man at the same point, I don’t think anyone would have said anything, do you know what I mean?(Woman 9)
A male’s idea or opinion could come across as more important that a female’s. So when a male speaks about something, they’re listened to. And a lot of times when a female speaks […] it’s overlooked or it’s like: “yeah, okay it’s a good idea but we’re not doing that”. So and because the men, men hang out together […] so they’re gonna listen to each other because they’re used to each other, so…(Woman 8)
3.2. Sexual Harassment
I think all of our women are a community within themselves because there’s often discussions in the locker room about like, “I can’t believe that just happened,” or “I can’t believe that person said that to me,” and they’ll say, “That happened to me too.”(Woman 2)
But then it was like, okay, just ignore them, ignore them, ignore them, ignore them. And then it’s like text messaging, comments. And it’s, I don’t know, covert? It’s like, you know how it starts out, right? And then it would get to like some inappropriate comments, like even of superiors as you get into the organization. […] And it was for me shocking and inappropriate. And again we police but yet, allow that behavior?(Woman 6)
When I was in police college, we had an inspector, who’s a female, come and talk to just the females. And she gave us this speech and she basically said: “Women in policing, get three titles, you’re either a bitch, a slut, or you’re gay.” And so she’s like, “kind of choose what titles you’re going to have. Because those are going to be your three titles”. And I always thought, I’m like really? Like that’s, like, kind of disheartening and like, gross. But as I went through it, I’m like, that’s very true.(Woman 7)
3.3. Motherhood and Parental Leave
So she [spouse of participant] basically put off her career to be able to get [child of participant] old enough that he could kinda look after himself sometimes. So I think that she made that sacrifice for sure and I think that would be pretty common for a lot of women in policing.(Man 3)
But hearing the Chief of Police from one of the police agencies make a comment that, when we were talking about diversity how […] it’s very difficult to hire women because women don’t want to be hired because they want to have babies. And the women they do hire impacts the police service because they take maternity leave. I couldn’t be quiet when they said that so I had to stick up my hand and address that […] but the fact that we still have police officers thinking that says there’s gender inequalities.(Woman 1)
Whereas male police officers, I mean we just go in and work, right. And we don’t have any benefits for paternal leave we just go straight to EI so it’s, we’re not encouraged to take time off, it’s more discouraged, as much as it can be discouraged I guess without becoming illegal or becoming, so… we’re just, you go in and work and the harder you work the harder you move so we have a little more opportunities.(Man 8)
3.4. Identity
Where my husband’s more like […] defined in a way by being a police officer, like that’s his life. And there’s a lot of guys at work who are like that, too. Whereas I’m like, you know, yeah this is what I do for a living, like as a job, but I had a whole life before I started this job. I went to University, I have a degree […] I have a diploma, I have friends.(Woman 5)
3.5. Stereotypically Feminine Attributes
Typically, our bad guys are male and to have that female presence, whatever reason it calms them down. You can have a proper conversation […] having that female presence definitely brings everything down a little more and, I, I feel like females are great communicators compared to men, they listen better, they talk better, they’ll respond better to situations, than some police officers that are male that can do that.(Man 2)
And so, it’s kind of interesting how throughout my patrol years, certain people were placed to work with me because I was female. And so because I was patient, calm, kind of a different personality than other people than they would marry us together to try and even it. And my best years of patrol were when I’ve worked with another female partner, because we had very little altercation and confrontation with people because we were both understanding, patient, didn’t look intimidating.(Woman 2)
You know men and women police differently. I think men will make a lot of decisions very, very quickly and that processing time sometime has to happen. Even though in a high stress situation sometimes you don’t have that time. I found women process things a little bit differently, especially when they’re newer to the job. They process a little bit differently. They make less snap decisions. They’re not as willing to go to a physical sort of confrontation, which is good. Generally, I find them easier to work with. I work way better with women than I do with men. And I like the balance that we have.(Man 3)
I can really see it on calls, where [women] gravitate to the victim, if they can go help the victim and take a statement from them, the male officer will make an arrest. Like I’ve been to a house where there was three or four of us there and before we cleared the apartment, she went and started taking a statement from the victim […] that’s a big no-no for saving our backs and stuff like that. I can kind of see, our females and like I said, I know other departments, there are some good females, but ours are more compassionate for victims or even there’s, the suspects, circumstances, right, “Oh that’s the way they were brought up” and stuff like that. Well, you’re still making your own choices, you have free will, right?(Man 5)
3.6. Hegemonic Masculinity
That we as police, we never deal with our own feelings, because we’re hard, we’re tough, we don’t cry, which is, which is total bullshit. I’m sure there’s probably enough members out there that are crying but we just never see it.(Man 6)
And I think as a female, certainly back then, in that male-dominant of “suck it up, buttercup” kinda thing, you just think as a female: “Oh I’m just being overly emotional…”(Woman 3)
[Police culture] might even be tougher on, if you’re not a stereotypical male, if you’re a softer, gentler, smaller male. I think you might be more, I know I’ve seen it, impacted more harsh, than that alpha male. I think the women generally we can hang in the middle pretty good. And we can hang out with the big dogs or we can hang out with the not-alpha-males. But I’m gonna say the non-alpha males are picked on bad.(Woman 3)
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Theme | Number of Participants | Number of References | Quotation |
---|---|---|---|
Discrimination | 11 | 51 | “It’s very routine to have those very noticeable—the men don’t notice it—but the women do […] the men will predominantly be called first on the high-risk calls and the women will be dispatched to, even to this day, the old lady who needs comforting for something.” Woman 5 |
Sexual Harassment | 8 | 48 | “If you’re the new girl, there’s always an assumption of rumors of who you’re sleeping with. I had lots of people come to me inappropriately.” Woman 2 |
Motherhood and Parental Leave | 12 | 24 | “I know that most police services want women in there, they want them to have families, careers, they say they want this work–life balance but then if women get pregnant and have families, it’s not really made that easy for them. It’s not a priority within the service to support that and it’s just, it feels more, and then obviously just going through it, it feels more like it’s a pain and they will allow you to do it, but they don’t really want you to.” Man 8 |
Identity | 17 | 31 | “Not totally [on being able to let go of policing on days off], I take my oath very seriously and I know a lot of other police officers do.” Man 2 |
Stereotypically Feminine Attributes | 16 | 52 | “I still think that women expect us to be more hands on. […]men are more likely to be hands-on physical and women would rather use the tools that they have.” Man 3 |
Hegemonic Masculinity | 17 | 85 | “It’s still almost a primitive world out there sometimes, where it’s very physical with men, people will try to engage more with women and talk to them.” Man 4 |
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Angehrn, A.; Fletcher, A.J.; Carleton, R.N. “Suck It Up, Buttercup”: Understanding and Overcoming Gender Disparities in Policing. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 7627. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijerph18147627
Angehrn A, Fletcher AJ, Carleton RN. “Suck It Up, Buttercup”: Understanding and Overcoming Gender Disparities in Policing. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2021; 18(14):7627. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijerph18147627
Chicago/Turabian StyleAngehrn, Andréanne, Amber J. Fletcher, and R. Nicholas Carleton. 2021. "“Suck It Up, Buttercup”: Understanding and Overcoming Gender Disparities in Policing" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18, no. 14: 7627. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ijerph18147627