Women in Law Enforcement Essay
There are many stereotypes that women in law enforcement field had to face throughout time. Women troubled with being taken serious as a crime fighter, or if a women would ever be allowed to become a police officer, was a question because women are usually viewed from others as too small, weak and gentle to ever be taken serious from the public. In this research paper I will explain the background on women in the law enforcement and how women have the same intelligence, communication, compassion, and diplomacy as a male officer. Having examples from articles and an interview from a women officer will help my thesis on how women can be successful as any male officer.
Women have struggled since the early …show more content…

From 1970 into the early 1990’s women in law enforcement have worked and fought for the same equal jobs of policing as men officers. A few examples would be on patrol, in command positions, and in promoting and recruiting officers. “It is clear that the structural changes in the law in the United States have helped to create an increase in the numbers of women in this traditionally male dominated field of police work. In policing, as departments expanded in the early 1970's, a related increase of black and white women police occurred driven by affirmative action practices”(Price). In 1985 Penny Harrington became the first woman to be named Chief of Police for a major city, Portland, Oregon, and in Atlanta, Georgia in 1994 Beverly J. Harvard became the first African American woman to be made Chief of Police for a large city. These accomplishments are a strong testament to the courage and perseverance that women have shown throughout the history of women in policing. Despite the fact that the law enforcement fields are heavily male dominated, woman have been making a large impact for themselves throughout country. Until the women's liberal movement in the 1970s, women generally had clerical roles or held jobs as dispatchers. Then, civil rights and affirmative action laws enabled women to assume they