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May 3, 2022 · Insights from interviews with ninety-one Canadian women police of varied rank and tenure, demonstrate women’s experiences of structured ambivalence as they strategically deploy and resist gendered policing narratives of the Brotherhood, Boys’ Club, and Sisterhood to negotiate their own ‘fit.’
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- Introduction
- Methods: Researching Police Bodies
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion
Blue uniform policing is the embodiment of state power because on occasions it involves enforcing the law using an officer’s physical strength and authority. As the success or failure of this process is observed by colleagues and often retold in the police canteen (Waddington, 1999), physical ability is an important marker of competence. The use of...
The evidence supporting this paper draws upon a previous ethnographic study published originally as a more general examination of gender and police culture (Author date). Some of the data analysed in this paper have already been used in those discussions, but is reanalysed here in terms of the ‘lived’ body, its symbolism, use, and control. As Heato...
The results of the wider ethnographic study suggested that being a woman in the police has certain distinct disadvantages. In particular, inhabiting or possessing a body classed as female leads to assumptions about capabilities surrounding, as might be expected, the care of children, even though many young women officers have not yet had time to ha...
Attempts to separate the significance of gender and the body are problematic and these tensions are played out constantly in terms of power relations and culture in policing. Gendered police roles and attitudes are bound up with embodied power, patriarchy, and machismo (Westmarland, 2001, Chapter 5). This includes the searching, arrest, and control...
This paper has attempted to provide some insight into the connections between the body and police culture and explain the value of using the body as a topic of cop cultural relevance and sociological interest. The preceding discussions of physicality, force, and strength and the variable abilities of men and women are not surprising in terms of wha...
- Louise Westmarland
- 2017
Oct 18, 2023 · In the final analysis, trust, confidence, and public support for law enforcement occurs when ethical police agency cultures meet high community expectations coupled with an active community commitment to co-responsibility for public safety.
diversity within their ranks, many Canadian police agencies have prioritized hiring more female police officers (e.g., Edmonton Police Service, 2019; RCMP, 2013; Toronto Police Service, 2019). However, women still only account for approximately 21% of officers in Canada (Conor, 2018).1
Although police organizations express a commitment to increasing the percentage of women police among their ranks, persistent barriers to inclusion and progressive change are affecting efforts to recruit, retain, and promote women officers.
Oct 28, 2022 · In general, the culture of policing organizations continues to silence, denigrate, and marginalize females and “the feminine” and produces gendered realities such as difficulties recruiting, promoting, and retaining women; difficulties creating systems and procedures to safely and fairly address sexual discrimination and harassment (Brown ...
Apr 10, 2020 · The implications are clear that police agencies need to continue to hire women, promote women at even greater rates, and remove structural barriers and cultural attitudes hindering women’s access and progress.
