NCJ Number
233749
Journal
Women and Criminal Justice Volume: 21 Issue: 1 Dated: January-March 2011 Pages: 63-81
Date Published
January 2011
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This study examined women police in a traditionally defined masculine role through the lens of advertisements. It explored the means by which the conflicting roles of women and police are enacted and negotiated in a professional police magazine.
Abstract
The present study was designed to analyze gender stereotypes in U.S. print advertisements of police officers in a professional police magazine (n = 680). A decade (1996-2006) of advertisements was examined using E. Goffman's (1979) framework for content/frame analysis. The results suggest that women (n = 99) are numerically underrepresented and socially excluded from the imagery of crime-fighting; rather, they are portrayed as being in lower ranks, stereotypically as caretakers and nurturers. The implications for women police, the citizens they serve, and the administrators who hire them are critical, as advertisements function as a feedback loop whereby notions of what a female officer is are represented, digested, and recreated. (Published Abstract) Tables, notes, and references