Women in the police: Integration or separation?

This study reports on the incorporation of female officers into the Atlanta Bureau of Police Services which until recently had an all-male occupational subculture. Fieldwork techniques included one-year of participant observation and the structured interviewing of 50 police officers.Findings indicated that women have been acculturated into the behavior and attitudes characteristic of the male police group. Specifically, they express increased cynicism and distrust of the public, and their behavior is abrupt with an unsympathetic demeanor. Conversely, women police officers have not been accepted as equally capable as male police officers by the latter. This discriminatory reaction results in a male overprotective attitude which is expressed in male domination of both detective and uniformed officers' work. These findings are congruent with the data from other studies which examined occupations in which women were numerically rare (tokens).The author concludes that because females emulate the male officers' ethos and behavior, and because they have not been accepted as equals in the police group, they have not greatly changed the male subculture of policing.