Women in policing: roles, challenges, and career advancement

Women in Policing

women's initial police work followed work in prisons

Estelle B. Freedman's book, Their Sister's Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930, focuses not on women emerging as police officers, but rather on women in prisons, and women who were employed by prisons to work with female inmates. On page 19, Freedman explains that in the late 19th Century, "sexual ideology began to suggest that purity came naturally to women, in contrast to men, who had to struggle to control their innate lust." It was argued by "influential Victorian authorities" that women did not have an appetite for sex, but rather they just went through the motions to have children. This attitude laid the groundwork for the vicious hatred society had for "impure women" who had the capacity "to unleash not just male sperm, but more importantly, the social disintegration that sexuality symbolized" (20).

And so, the "fallen women" received terrible treatment in prisons (particularly in the early 19th Century), and thus, were to be examples to all women, to behave and stay within the boundaries of raising children, cooking meals, being obedient to men. After all (20), "women had to be pure to enforce male continence."

The book, From Social Work to Crimefighter (Shulz, 1995), spells out in the Introduction that - as Freedman's book documents and sets the stage for - "the roots of the policewomen's movement can be traced to earlier demands for female jail and prison and then for female police matrons." The author points out that back as far as 1820 when Quaker women worked as religious and secular trainer-volunteers for female inmates in prisons. And, she explains, the "only position in corrections open to women" from 1920 into the 1870s was that of prison matron. And then, by the 1880s, women who had been involved in the abolitionist movement "turned their attention to religious, temperance, and benevolent associations" - and helped create the "police matron" profession.

Though initially put to work as custodians, women in police work - helped by the strong advocacy of the number one most powerful women's group at that time, the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WTCU), and the General Federation of Women's Clubs - began working as matrons in 36 cities (page 13).

In fact, the WTCU influence on political and governmental decision-makers in 1890 was significant: chapters of WTCU were active in 46 states, pushing for the "appointment" of women matrons in police stations. The first law which required the appointment of police matrons had been enacted in Massachusetts in 1887. That law affected cities with 30,000 or more residents, and within three years (15) there were 22 police matrons across the state, including a total of ten in Boston.

New York was behind Massachusetts in this important reform movement, as the "big apple" did not appoint matrons to police departments until 1891 (16). And the New York City Police Department only changed policy and allowed the first matrons to be of service to female prisoners after a Harper's Weekly article that reported a police officer's attempted rape (and guilty plea) regarding his attack on a 15-year-old female inmate. New York (under police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt between 1895-1897) then hurried to appoint matrons to police stations - in fact, in 1896, Roosevelt appointed 32 matrons - "the most ever named in one year."

Matrons' duties included searching female suspects, processing them, escorting them to their cells and supervising them in precinct detention facilities in New York City. The matrons also cared for lost children, according to the author. By the year 1899, New York City had 59 matrons. Women were still not carrying out police duties in full, but they were making inroads.

Women on the job as members of the police departments.

Another book - Policewomen: A History - reports that in the late 1870s, the years prior to the beginning of the appointment of matrons, "female detainees were subjected to sexual abuse by male guards and by male detainees" (Segrave, 1995) (5). In fact, female inmates were "put to work in a traditional role of performing cleaning duties throughout the facility," which put them "at greater risk of assault, since they had to move through the entire complex." These terrible conditions were duly reported by the fledgling media and by the WCTU, and ironically actually provided momentum for women to begin to have matron jobs with police units.

By 1915, the very first female police officer (not matron, but officer) was appointed to work in Haverhill, Massachusetts; her hiring was motivated in large part by the fact that (17) there were "...an increasingly large number of young girls aged 12 to 18 who could be found each night roaming the streets" as prostitutes. And so in 1914, the state legislature had enacted a law providing for the appointment of women, "as adjuncts of the police system."

In 1911 (19), a female officer was appointed in Minneapolis; Baltimore appointed 3 policewomen in 1912, the same year Denver appointed the first woman police officer in Colorado. But there was still the "mothering" concept - as opposed to law enforcement - used as a justification in hiring some of these women; to wit, in 1913, when the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners appointed a female to the police department, they announced that she would be "the city's mother to the motherless."

As to how they differed from their male colleagues, the Chicago Police Department appointed 10 women on August 1, 1913 (21), and clearly these female officers were seen as more sensitive to girls, because they were assigned to beaches, parks, playgrounds and amusement places. And it was noted by the authorities in Chicago that "greater care and appreciative attention to the morals and physical requirements of girls may be expected from police-women than from ordinary policemen..." Why? Because "ordinary policemen" have "necessarily become hardened to some extent" by the kinds of services they are called upon to perform.