9/27/2020 Women in Policing - Police Chief Magazine

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Police Chief Magazine | Topics | Recruitment &

Personnel | Women in Policing

Women in Policing
The Numbers Fall Far Short of the Need
Ivonne Roman, Chief of Police (Ret.), Newark Police Department, New Jersey

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The presence of women in policing in the United States lags well behind that of
comparable countries. Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom all have nearly
twice the U.S. percentage of policewomen.1 That persistent hiring de cit de es
research spanning more than 50 years that well documents the bene ts of women
in policing.

Women are consistently rated as trusted by their communities and, importantly, are
motivated to serve communities in an era of decreased police legitimacy.2 Women
have high levels of interpersonal communication skills, which translates into more
e ective practices in the eld.3 Women are found to have a calming e ect on male
partners in high-stress and dangerous assignments, resulting in fewer police
deaths.4 Higher levels of female representation are associated with organizations
that emphasize community policing.5 Female police o cers have a positive in uence
on the perceived job performance, trustworthiness, and fairness of a police agency,
perhaps increasing the public’s willingness to cooperate in the production of positive
public safety outcomes.6

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Female o cers are less likely to use force, use excessive force, or be named in a
lawsuit than male o cers.7 Research has found that male o cers were more likely
than female o cers to be aggressive as a result of some quality of the encountered
member of the public, such as race or socioeconomic class8 Even though studies
show that subjects use the same amount of force against female o cers as against
male o cers, and in some cases, more force, female o cers are more successful in
defusing violent or aggressive behavior.9

Though the research con rms the many bene ts of having more women in policing,
female police representation in the United States has stagnated over the past 20
years at around 12 percent. This may be due to an unwelcoming culture within many
police organizations.10 Old stereotypes associated with women are defended by
elements of some police institutions, creating formidable barriers for female
applicants and women navigating the profession. In surveys, female o cers
perceived that they were subjected to more criticism than their male counterparts,
due to masculine values that support and advance masculinity, as well as sexism
that negatively impacts women’s experience in policing.11

Research Evidence and Legal Challenges to Police

Ability Tests
When women began to be hired by U.S. police departments, they were often
segregated into gendered roles focusing on social service or they lled clerical
positions. With the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, women’s participation
in all aspects of law enforcement and public safety occupations increased, but only
to a point. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) noted, “Once
employers could no longer segregate women into peripheral jobs, they began using
screening tests for public safety occupations.”12

Among the rst screening tests were height and weight requirements. In the 1977
Dothard v. Rawlinson case, the plainti s showed that the height and weight
requirements excluded more than 40 percent of women and less than 10 percent of
men. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the use of height and weight as
a screening mechanism was unlawful discrimination against women and some

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minority groups.13 In Blake v. City of Los Angeles (1979), a federal appellate court ruled
that police height requirements violated Title VII because the police department did
not establish that a height minimum was necessary for safe and e cient job
performance.14

After the courts rejected height requirements, police departments turned to physical
ability tests (PATs). The PATs were soon challenged, with plainti s alleging that the
exams were speci cally developed to screen out women rather than test work-
required abilities.15 Flawed validation studies were found to be self-reinforcing.16
Research established that “on the rare occasions when the skills tested would be
needed in emergency situations, other skills of teamwork, communication, and
judgment were not tested.”17

Commonly, PAT policies overemphasize upper body strength, which may discourage
female applicants.18 In a 2018 survey of criminal justice undergraduates in ve
universities, women comprised 56 percent of the sample, yet 46 percent of the
women surveyed were apprehensive about the PAT for police careers.19 Women are
right to be concerned about the PAT: Women fail police tness tests at higher rates
than men, though the validity of many PAT programs are in question.20

A researcher set out to investigate the experience of recruits in police academies.

She applied and was accepted into a police academy training program, where she
experienced recruit training rsthand. During participant observation as a police
recruit, researcher Irene Prokos found that male recruits were indoctrinated through
an “uno cial curriculum”:

By watching and learning from instructors and each other, male students developed
a form of masculinity that (1) excluded women students and exaggerated di erences
between them and men; and (2) denigrated women in general.21

Courts have consistently ruled that PATs that produce disparities on the basis of
gender are unlawful, unless they have been validated as bona de work
requirements (United States v. Virginia et. al., 1996; Bauer v. Lynch, 2016; U.S. v. City of
Erie, 2005).22 Overemphasis on physical strength in police academies, without
validation as a bona de occupational quali cation (BFOQ), runs afoul of the EEOC
and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.23 However, many of the nearly 18,000 law
enforcement agencies in the United States continue to rely on PATs that produce
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disparate outcomes without validation of the tests’ alignment with work

requirements.24

Some agencies have opted for PATs that are gender-normed, meaning the
requirements di er for men and women. Currently, the U.S. Army, Drug
Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and U.S. Marshals
Service have gender-normed tests. To be sure, gender-normed PATs are not
required, but the courts do require that any PAT selected be validated as measuring
BFOQ, if it is to be defensible in court.25

In a challenge to gender-normed PATs, a male FBI trainee who failed the pushup
requirements test on ve occasions sued because women were required to perform
fewer pushups than men. In deciding the matter of Bauer v Lynch, a federal appeals
court held that physical tness tests that account for physiological di erences based
on gender are not discriminatory as long as they impose equal tness-level burdens
on men and women, noting that “equally t” men and women may achieve di erent
raw scores on a PAT.26

As its rationale, the court stated that having identical requirements for men and
women essentially demanded a higher level of tness for women than for men
because, “men and women are simply not physiologically the same for the purposes
of physical tness programs.” 27 The court did not prohibit gender-neutral tests—the
ruling was speci c to the legality of gender-normed tests. The court showed
deference to the FBI, noting that the PAT was researched and piloted prior to
implementation and was statistically defensible in testing tness while avoiding
disparities based on gender. A well-designed PAT program will be defensible in
court, meeting both legal requirements and the physical requirements of the job.

The U.S. Army is in the process of developing a gender-neutral physical tness test,
with a research phase implemented over two years. The development process has
included feedback from scientists, commanders, and soldiers. The exercises were
selected for being “scienti cally viable” in the degree to which they mimicked
physical movements of soldiers on the battle eld. This is the validation process, in
action. The Army is piloting the proposed PAT program in 60 battalions. This is the
evaluation process, in action. The Army is training soldiers to pass the new tness

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test, and it expects to fully implement the new tness test program in October
2020.28 This is the implementation plan.

Conclusion
The current state of the law and progress in the U.S. military should be encouraging
for women, and yet those advances only beg the question. How many of the United
States’ 664 state and local police academies have a PAT that includes validation,
implementation, and evaluation processes? How many of the 664 state or local
agencies and police academies in the United States are investing in preparing
applicants and recruits of all genders to pass the PAT?

Ivonne Roman is a former chief of police with the Newark, New Jersey,
Police Department. She was selected and served for three years as a LEADS
scholar at the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. She
holds a master’s degree in public administration from Rutgers University–
Camden, and is pursuing her PhD. She is also a TED Talks fellow, National
Police Foundation fellow, and executive board member of the American
Society of Evidence-Based Policing.

Notes:

1
Tim Prenzler and Georgina Sinclair, “The Status of Women Police O cers: An
International Review,” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 41, no. 2 (June
2013): 115–131.

2
Natalie Todak, “The Decision to Become a Police O cer in a Legitimacy Crisis,”
Women and Criminal Justice 27, no. 4 (2017): 250–270.
3
W. Dwayne Orrick, Best Practices Guide: Recruitment, Retention, and Turnover of Law
Enforcement Personnel (Alexandria, VA: Smaller Police Departments Technical
Assistance Program, international Association of Chiefs of Police, 2008).
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4
Christine Jacqueline Johns, E ects of Female Presence on Male Police O cers’ Shooting
Behavior (master’s thesis, Michigan State University, 1976).

5
Todak, “The Decision to Become a Police O cer in a Legitimacy Crisis.”
6
Norma M. Riccucci, Gregg G. Van Ryzin, and Cecilia F. Lavena, “Representative
Bureaucracy in Policing: Does It increase Perceived Legitimacy?” Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory 24, no. 3 (July 2014): 537–551.
7
Kim Lonsway et al., Hiring and Retaining More Women: The Advantages to Law
Enforcement Agencies (National Center for Women & Policing, 2003); Amie Shuck and
Cara Rabe-Hemp, “Citizen Complaints and Gender Diversity in Police Organisations,”
Policing and Society 26, no. 8 (2016): 859–874.
8
Judith Greenwald, Aggression as a Component of Police-Citizen Transactions:
Di erences Between Male and Female Police O cers (PhD dissertation, City University
of New York, 1976).
9
Amie Shuck and Cara Rabe-Hemp, “Women Police: The Use of Force by and Against
Female O cers,” Women & Criminal Justice 16, no. 4 (2005): 91–117.

10
Gary Cordner and Annmarie Cordner, “Stuck on a Plateau? Obstacles to
Recruitment, Selection, and Retention of Woman Police,” Police Quarterly 14, no. 3
(September 2011): 207–226.

11
Joana Castelhano et al., “Police Training Course for Agents—Entry into the
Profession and Also into the Distinction Between Men and Women,” Work 41,
Supplement 1 (2012): 4637–4641.

12
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Program Evaluation: Recruitment &
Hiring Gender Disparities in Public Safety Occupations (O ce of Federal Operations,
2018), 12.

13
Dothard v. Rawlinson, 433 U.S. 321 (1977).

14
Blake v. City of Los Angeles, 595 F.2d 1367 (1979).
15
Larry K. Gaines, Steve Falkenberg, and Joseph A. Gambino, “Police Physical Agility
Testing: A Historical and Legal Analysis,” American Journal of Police 12, no. 4 (1993):
47–66.
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16
Gaines, Falkenberg, and Gambino, “Police Physical Agility Testing,” citing O cers
for Justice v. Civil Service Commission of the City of San Francisco, 395 F.Supp. 378 (N.D.
Cal. 1975).

17
Tim Prenzler, “Rebuilding the Walls? The Impact of Police Pre-Entry Physical Ability
Tests on Female Applicants,” Current Issues in Criminal Justice 7, no. 3 (1996): 314–324.
18
Anne Li Kringen and Madeline Novich, “Is It ‘Just Hair’ or Is It ‘Everything’?
Embodiment and Gender Repression in Policing,” Gender, Work & Organization 25, no.
2 (March 2018): 195–213.
19
Charles Scheer, Michael Rossler, and Leonard Papania, “Interest in Police Patrol
Careers: An Assessment of Potential Candidates’ Impressions of the Police
Recruitment, Selection, and Training Processes,” Aquila (2018).
20
Michael L. Birzer and Delores E. Craig, “Gender Di erences in Police Physical
Ability Test Performance,” American Journal of Police 15, no. 2 (November 2017): 93–
108.
21
Anastasia H. Prokos and Irene Padavic, “‘There Oughtta Be a Law Against Bitches’:
Masculinity Lessons in Police Academy Training,” Gender, Work & Organization 9, no. 4
(August 2002): 439–459.
22
Andrew Ford, “NJ Police Tests Fail Women Recruits. Here’s How It Hurts Your
Safety and Your Wallet,” app., February 25, 2020.

23
United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996); Bauer v. Lynch, 812 F.3d 340 (4th Cir.
2016); United States v. City of Erie, PA, 411 F.Supp.2d 524 (W.D. Pa. 2005).
24
Corina Schulze, “The Masculine Yardstick of Physical Competence: U.S. Police
Academy Fitness Tests,” Women & Criminal Justice 22, no. 2 (2012): 89–107.

25
Ford, “NJ Police Tests Fail Women Recruits.”
26
Bauer, 812 F.3d 340.
27
Bauer, 812 F.3d at 350.

28
Meghann Myers, “Here’s an Early Draft of the Army’s New Fitness Test Standards,”
Military Times, August 1, 2018.

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Please cite as

Ivonne Roman, “Women in Policing: The Numbers Fall Far Short of the Need,”
Police Chief Online, April 22, 2020.

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