NCJ Number
175477
Journal
Police Chief Volume: 65 Issue: 10 Dated: October 1998 Pages: 42-52
Date Published
1998
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This article describes strategies to help police departments recruit, integrate, and retain women police officers.
Abstract
In 1995, several police departments participated in a national demonstration project to create new technologies and strategies for helping employers recruit and integrate women into male-dominated occupations. The departments began hosting career fairs that used female role models who described their jobs and provided information about the police academy, the application process, and a realistic description of women's careers in policing. In addition, departments examined their physical agility tests in order to design gender-specific physical conditioning regimes that would prepare women to perform all the required tasks. Departments held sexual harassment awareness workshops; instituted changes in training procedures to make all personnel, especially supervisors, aware of women's concerns, including such disparate things as childcare during working hours and failure to provide uniforms sized for women; and began research into reasons behind the small percentage of women who are ranked officers and in command positions. Notes