Female Police Officers: Should I Stay or Should I Go

Increasing the number of female police officers is a challenge for police agencies.  While there has been ample research on this topic, the issue remains, and so the research continues.  Dr. Kathleen Padilla, from the School of Criminal Justice & Criminology at Texas State University, joins the podcast to discuss her 2024 study exploring the advice current and former female officers would give those who are thinking about entering the police profession.

Main Topics

• Females in policing can no longer be considered “token” hires.
• The “30x30” program is intended to increase the number of female officers.
• Cultural and operational changes may have already improved female representation.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Welcome to the Police and Service Training Podcast. This podcast is dedicated to providing research evidence to street level police officers and staff of lawyers. The program is intended to help the police and law enforcement better programs, understand challenge and policies, and dispel the myths of police officer behaviors. I'm your host, Scott Phillips. There is a large body of research exploring the motivations for a person to become a police officer. Some of it is very general in nature, while others focused on a family link to joining a police department. Much of the research examined the barriers and incentives for trying to cultivate racial and ethnic minorities to join the police. In 2021, the 30 by 30 initiative began. This initiative is intended to increase female police officer representation in policing to at least 30 percent by the year 2030, hence 30 by 30. This is an ambitious goal considering women currently make up less than 25 percent of police officers in the United States. It is also ambitious because females have had a history of resisting policing as a career. Still, if a 10% increase is going to be achieved, it's important for police agencies to understand the contemporary issues when someone is thinking about becoming a police officer. To help us understand the barriers and motivators for females to enter the policing world, I'm joined by Kathleen Padilla. Kathleen is an assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Texas State University. She is also my first guest to consent to being on the podcast for a second time, so I greatly appreciate that. She's here to discuss her 2024 article titled The Bar Is Different as a Woman: a thematic analysis of career advice given by female police officers. Again, thanks for joining the podcast, Kathleen.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

All right. So you've studied a variety of a variety of topics. We've covered, uh, had this conversation in the past, but I wanted to ask what drew your attention to this particular topic?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Yeah, it was really kind of a fortuitous and organic connection. So I was a part of the NIJ-sponsored Applied Criminology and Data Management course that was hosted by the American Society of Evidence-based policing. Um, and so in this program, they paired practitioners and early career policing scholars together to conduct any type of research project that the agency may have needed help with.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

I was uh I ended up being matched up with Kelly Renfro from the Dallas PD. And she had mentioned that one of the biggest things they were struggling with was the recruitment and retention of women. So Dallas PD has, I believe, about 3,300 officers, and they had lost about 500 women from the field over the last five years.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

So they were losing a lot of women, having trouble recruiting uh women in. And so they just wanted to figure out a way to see what was happening, figure out why people were staying, what was causing people to leave. And so that really kind of kickstarted my involvement with this topic and my introduction to the 30 by 30 and uh folks over at that organization.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Okay, very good. Now, when it comes to policing research, um, again, this type of study may be important for 30 by 30 initiative, uh, but why might this area of inquiry be important or relevant to policing across the country?

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Right. So we understand um women bring a lot to the table when it comes to policing, lower, uh, lower levels of use of force, fewer citizen complaints, um, a lot more empathy and ability to de-escalate in certain situations. So there is a tangible benefit to having women in the police force, uh, you know, for the outcomes that of their involvement with the community. But even before that, just creating equitable work conditions is something that all agencies and organizations should strive for, not just policing.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Right. That's something I hadn't thought of, but we're gonna get to me being a man in a couple minutes. Before we get into your research, I wanted to ask a little bit more about the 30 by 30 if you can help us out. Uh, can you give us some a little bit deeper background on that?

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Yeah, this is an organ and an organization that I could spend a ton of time talking about. Mo Magoff and Yvonne Roman were the co-founders. Uh, Tanya Meisenholder is one of the uh one of the lead uh folks there now. But this goal, right, of increasing female officer representation to 30% by the year 2030, of course, is a very catchy kind of um easy to understand and comprehend. But it's not just um accidental or coincidental. It's very purposeful. So it's based on the idea of representative bureaucracy. So once a group reaches about 30% of any given population, they're no longer considered tokens, right? So they can start to actively impact policy, actively make changes within the organization, as opposed to just being, you know, the diversity higher effectively. So this goal of reaching 30%, which a lot of agencies already have done, um, is there to give women a seat at the table effectively. And so their main purpose here obviously is not about lowering standards in policing. That's what a lot of folks um tend to think it's about. Okay. Um, but it's just about providing equity. So making sure the policies that are enacted in a police department, whether it's you know entrance into the academy or promotional procedures, are they evidence-based? Are they uh required for the position? And are they something that is not going to disparately impact portions of the population? Um and so that's that's one of their major goals. So they are trying to figure out how to create equity in these workplaces and then helping recruit women in and then figuring out ways that we can keep them there. It's not enough just to get women in the door or you know, any any part any population. Um, but we want to make sure that we're creating an environment that they are supported, that they can thrive, so that we're then not losing them kind of on the back end.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Right, which we're gonna get into the history of the police culture in a couple of minutes, but but studying why a particular group of people enter policing, or in fact, why they might avoid it, has again, this has been studied for decades. Um what does your research add to what's already been out there?

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yeah, that's an excellent question. Um, exactly. This is not a new topic. Um, trying to figure out how to create representative police forces. I think what's really unique about this study is we were able to access officers that had left the department. So, why did you leave? What were some of the reasons and factors that led to your um separation? Uh forgive me there, separation from the department. So getting set getting access to those individuals, even just in a survey response and these open-ended responses, I think was really unique. Um, and the way that this whole project, and I'll talk about that a little bit uh later, but this question in particular, um, kind of asking for advice, I think a lot of a lot of women really uh appreciated the opportunity to voice those opinions and to kind of give feedback and serve in that mentorship role, um, even if it was just in a research study, which then kind of highlights right, kind of this burden of representation. If you are one of the only women in a police department, that is a lot of pressure on you to make sure that other women feel included, to make sure that they're receiving um mentorship and opportunities that maybe you didn't have in order to continue progressing the department that way. Um, and then just importantly, like a lot of these issues don't just impact women in policing, right? Things like shift scheduling for uh for parents broadly, of course, women tend to take on the majority of child care responsibilities, but um having to adjust your shift schedule to deal with child care is something that affects male officers too. Um so creating these environments that are more conducive to having a family and balancing your home life and your work life is something that can positively impact everybody.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Now, your article also reviewed the the difficulties specifically for female officers. And honestly, as I read uh that section of your paper, it seemed that um I've we've been reading these things for years. We're academics, but it seemed that these are the same hurdles that have been around for 50 years. Am I am I kind of am I right on that or am I just old?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

No, you are you are absolutely correct. But I'm old, I'm old too. Um no, you're right. But a lot of these issues are things that we have seen um for decades, right? I think what is what has changed is a lot of these um formal barriers have started to disappear. So women are now allowed to join police force. They're not prevented from being out on patrol duty, they're not um being assigned assignments based specifically on their gender. Um so there is more opportunity and equity in those spaces simply as a result of the times. Um, some of the things, of course, that are, I think, changing for the better, for the worse, we'll see moving forward. There are some more gender-specific considerations. So we're starting to see more and more companies create uniforms that were designed for the female body, right? That was not the case for the longest time. So women were having to be out in the field with improperly fitting uniforms, improperly fit uh body armor, which poses a very obvious safety hazard. So we're seeing a lot more kind of innovation in order to uh address some of these gender-specific concerns. But you're right, we're still seeing a lot of these kind of more passive uh barriers that we've seen in the past.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Right, the the locker room or roll call room. Uh when I was in policing years ago, there were um they they had just started having uh female locker rooms. And before that, they they we copy had the same locker room, which is yeah, e even by standards back then, it was like they were starting to wake up. Yeah, something you also focused on in in the paper was the issue when you discussed this before you got into the research was the issue of uh promotions. Uh can you expand on this issue for females? Um, because and this is again, maybe I'm sounding like a guy, but there are a lot of female police chiefs. As I said, go ahead and smack me down if I'm wrong about that.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Uh so only about three 3.8% of police chiefs across the country are women.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Um, so we are it I think it's it's an issue of how they're um kind of showcased, right? Anytime a new police chief is a woman, it's a story and it's it's obviously very much worthy of celebration, but I think it also makes us think that the field is a little bit more equal than it really is. So we might think that there are more women in these positions of leadership than there actually are. Um but what we're what we're seeing a lot in uh as it as it relates to women promoting up is you have this issue of when you promote up, you go down to the bottom of kind of the seniority pool when it comes to shifts. So you might promote up to a sergeant, but then you're kicked back down to night.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Right. And if you're a a woman who has uh the the primary uh childcare responsibilities, that's not necessarily feasible. So some of these barriers with how things have how they've always been done might just generally dissuade women from attempting to promote up. They've finally gotten to a a schedule that aligns with maybe their childcare family caregiving responsibilities, and why would they want to take a step to further their career, which could then kind of disrupt that scheduling. And then what we also see is a lot of these opportunities, right? We're we're getting a lot more equitable in terms of the promotional process, but a lot of these opportunities are still very informal. So training and mentorship oftentimes happens in these very informal settings. So you had mentioned kind of the good old boys club, um, right, locker room talk. These may be ways that are excluding women, even if it's unintentional. You're giving additional mentorship opportunities to uh to male officers simply by by their presence. Um and so that really highlights that a lot of this isn't done necessarily maliciously, right? It's done because the default is the male officer, right? And so um we we do see a lot of that kind of unintentionally impacting women in the force.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

Yeah, yeah. I I was gonna say something, but I'm not sure. Um I'll cut I'll probably cut this out. Some of the best supervisors I've ever had, just in general, have been have been females.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

So, you know, I like I say, maybe I'll leave it in, maybe I'll I'll cut it. But it's just one of those things that, you know, uh objectively, uh I can't count everybody that I've ever had, but anyway.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Uh okay, so I'm I just want to touch on that real quick. Sure. That that like perfectly kind of encapsulates it, right? Like women typically tend to feel like they have to prove themselves or check every single box in order to apply for a promotion. So, in some circumstances, certainly not all, of course. Uh, but women who are applying for the same job as a man may be more qualified simply because women wait until they check every box to apply, whereas men typically don't. And that's not anything um insidious or nefarious on anybody's part, just different, different ways that men and women are socialized, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

So by the time a woman makes it to a leadership position, you might see, well, wow, this is an incredible leader. They've had to maybe maybe work a little bit harder to get into that position.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

That's an excellent point. I had never thought of that. Now let's let's let's jump into the study. Now, you you and your colleagues, um uh Kelly Renfro and Jessica Huff, you sought to examine the and examine the advice that uh current or or former former female officers would give to other women who might be considering entering or promoting within it. Uh, can you give us a quick overview of how you actually collected the data?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yeah, so we uh were able to utilize uh Kelly Renfro's position at the DPT, DPD, to uh collect contact information for those current and former officers. So whether it was their duty-issued phone or email or their personal phone or email once they separated from the department. Um then we just sent them either a text or an email with a Qualtrich survey. Super easy. We sent that out to about 915 um individuals, and we had a about a 23% response rate, which for an online survey is pretty good. Um surveys to officers can always be a little um you're taking a gamble, right, in terms of if they're going to want to respond.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Uh officers are notorious, notoriously resistant to answering a survey. I mean, it's it's delete.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Exactly. And so um, you know, we were pretty happy with our response rate. Um, and so we we surveyed them about um every aspect of their career, right? Um motivations to enter the force, their uh potential issues with you know their time during the police force, support, organizational commitment, um, their promotional or attempt to promote uh those kind of experiences. And then if they had left the department, uh we inquired a little bit more about some of those reasons. And then, of course, for this paper in particular, they were then left with the question at the very end uh what advice would you have for other women who want to enter or promote within law enforcement?

SPEAKER_02 15:56

So and that's what you used for your analysis, the open-ended correct.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah, so this was this was entirely qualitative, which is great.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Qual hey, there's a lot of great qualitative data out there. I've done the same kinds of studies and uh didn't get a ton of responses either, but I was able to get enough to get get some good ideas about what's going on in the topic I was studying and got it finished. But okay, so your findings why date you identified three basic categories of responses. What was the first one?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

So we we kind of had an idea of what they were going to look like before we even looked at the data, but the first was what I termed strong discouragement. So these were respondents that were like, hell no, I would never encourage anybody, male or female, to join the police force. The climate sucks, the pay sucks, like just don't do it. Stay.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

They waving them off. Don't land here, don't land here.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Exactly. And so that one I thought was really interesting because they're like, I don't care if you're a man or a woman. I'm not going to encourage you to join this job right now.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Okay, then the second type was yeah, the I I I characterized it when I was reading it as, yeah, the job is good, but as I always joke with students, there's almost always a big butt. Can you explain this one?

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah, so this was what I what I termed um like encouragement with a disclaimer. So these were respondents, this was the bulk of the respondents who are like they absolutely were wanting to encourage people to to join the force. But as you mentioned, it always comes to the big butt. So it was, but you have to be prepared for X, Y, and Z. And so a lot of the things that they talked about fell into these categories of like the impact on the family, which we've touched on a bit, right? Like child care, school, and that's for caregiving as well as like child care. So if you're caring for a parent, something like that. The uh the next uh category was related to machismo or kind of this like hyper-masculine um identity and culture within policing. There's a this kind of informal concept that a lot of uh most policewomen that I've talked to are familiar with it, but and you you can cut this part out if you if you want to, but um, women in the police force are typically either a bitch or a whore, right? You're either like very strong, very assertive, and you're disliked by your male counterparts, or you engage in um, you know, maybe flirtatious or romantic behaviors that then get you uh um kind of a mark on your reputation that way. So dealing with this kind of hypermasculine culture was noted by a lot of a lot of officers and respondents. The next category there was um having like a strong sense of yourself and your identity and making sure you're not losing yourself to the job, particularly amongst kind of this machismo um culture. So making sure you know who you are and you're there for the job and you're kind of keeping your ethics and your morality in line with why you join the job as a way to kind of help you succeed through there. And then the last grouping was yeah, join the job, but make sure you have a really strong external support system. So, of course, having a good support system within the agency is is super beneficial, but making sure you have non-law enforcement friends or family, so you can kind of separate that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Yeah, it's interesting when you when I was reading some of those things, I hadn't considered the fact, and we with the way you're describing it now, it's uh some of those can still be applied to any gender male or female that you know you're you're gonna work nights, just get ready for that, right? Whether you like it or not. But some of the other ones, it's I don't think I would have seen or heard those kinds of comments from anybody as a male officer. You know, that the family orientation, those kinds of things. Again, you're working nights, that that would impact the family, but you know, working nights is is hard on the cicadian rhythms to begin with, so it can be unhealthy. But just you're a low end of the totem pole. But um and then there was the third. Okay, those were the go for it.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Yeah, these were the the strong encouragement uh folks. So the hell yeah, go for it, make it happen. Um, and then they also provided some additional kind of advice of you know, if you're going to promote, promote early. Ideally, again, kind of getting into this family aspect, promote before you have kids, right? So you're kind of uh gaining gaining leadership that way, promote as often as you can and as often as you're you're wanting to.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

So instead of checking all the instead of checking all the boxes, like like you said earlier, it's like, you know, yeah, yeah, you got you got five out of the seven, go for it earlier.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Exactly. Yeah. Get your career where you want to get it, and then have a family effectively was was um one of one of the kind of underlying ideals there. And then also this notion of again, mentorship, right? Don't pull up the ladder once you promote up. So if you do promote, help other women so that you're not the only one in that role.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

Excellent. Okay, so then as I was reading, I saw a couple of implications, and this is always not how we close it, but we come after we talk about the research, it's like, okay, what are the two or three implications for policing that that you you would suggest?

SPEAKER_00 20:58

So uh generally this is broken down into like cultural and operational changes. So culture obviously is much more difficult to uh to change, much slower to change over time.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

But I think even I think even now we're seeing a lot more um male allyship within police organizations, men serving as mentors um for female officers, sponsoring them in that capability or in that capacity, right? Helping them get opportunities for training and advancement. Um, and that is a very simple way to then model to other officers that, like, hey, this is the type of behavior that we should be engaging in, right? We are all officers here. We're not trying to send all of our female officers out to domestic violence and and um sexual assault cases, right? We're all kind of part of this team. Um obviously much slower to change. Some of the operational uh changes and and and implications, I think, are are more um plausible, a little bit more uh. the the word is escaping me a little bit easier to to achieve rather and so I'll preface this with Dallas PD is an incredibly progressive police department. They were in the process of um starting a daycare at the PD so that so that uh parents um could have you know their kids close by. They have nursing and breastfeeding and pumping rooms at every station so that moms who are still kind of in the postpartum that postpartum phase don't have to delay returning to work. So they're they're incredibly progressive in a lot of these respects. And these are things that I think other agencies could and and should kind of take heed of and start to model some of that behavior. Of course obviously a lot of it is resource based, right? You have to be able to find the funding to make a lot of these large large changes. But some of those basic operational and like logistical changes I think are are some of the most tangible.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Now I wanted to ask you also um this has come to my mind again I'm a baby boomer like I say I I'm old and I wear it and I don't care that's perfectly fine. But the the idea when I've talked to other police agencies with the the one of the hiring problems that some of these agencies have hinted at is the fact that where you know years ago overtime was overtime overtime overtime cops cops worked until they dropped themselves. But there seems to be more of an interest in a work-life balance and I'm not sure if that's the proper term or if that's just a a buzzword that we hear these days. Nevertheless boomers like me might see things and we're not we're not in the department anymore. There's there's nobody my age in police law in law enforcement or there shouldn't be that way correct but then you're starting to get into the generation Y's and the Xers and you know it this these new so maybe that's part of those things that you're seeing. And do you have any comment on that? Has there been any research on that to look at the different generations that might be out there? And if there's not maybe this is something for others to consider.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Yeah no I don't know that there's any um kind of active empirical uh research on kind of the generational differences but absolutely we're seeing younger police chiefs younger people in positions of power um and you know the Xers, millennials and and now the Z that can, you know, that's old enough to be in the academy now. And that's where we're um yeah there's absolutely more of a focus on separating your work and your your home life. So work life balance you nailed it um that's exactly what it is kind of this focus on this is my job, but when the job is over I'm going to go home. And I'm not going to you know kind of overextend myself unless it's absolutely necessary. But yeah I I think as we continue to see kind of newer generations enter the police force just like in society we're seeing shifts in how we talk about work-life balance shifts and how we talk about you know mental health and stigma and things like that. And I think those have um kind of coincided or paralleled with changes that we've seen in the police force, right? Society's becoming more open-minded to these things and it's just translating to that that occupation.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Okay that's that's that's great to hear because uh again that that could that can be part of that slow cultural glacial change that is occurring not because it's the culture that's changing it's the people who are the people in there that okay I I still want to be macho. There's still that macho component but the in the because that's I don't want to say that's maybe I'm I'm I'm gonna stumble through this but I'm gonna leave this in. You got that macho component but that seems to be okay here's how I have to perform on the street but when I'm not performing for whether it's in front of people or you know having to be the cop in the uniform with the badge and the gun that when I'm in the patrol car or I'm having the the the the the Tim Horton's donut or something like that at three in the morning when I'm having coffee with a colleague I can let those those that that facade down. And so that macho culture is still there but it's got a a place in in in a unique setting on the street when I need to use it but then I can turn it off when I'm having a cup of coffee with somebody.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Yeah I think that's that's exactly it. I'll I'll throw a little uh qualitative research term but Urban Goffman refers to this as our front self and our back self. So like who we are when we're presenting to the world versus who we are when we're kind of on our own.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

But I I definitely think that that is related to what we're seeing now, right? So when people are out in the field, they do have this persona that they have to portray for their own safety, for the safety of others. And then once they're you know off that call or off shift they can kind of turn it off right and so I I think we're seeing a lot of that uh changing in in the newer generations that are joining the police force.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

Okay now so you you did this study you used the last question the open-ended question is there anything we missed from any other research that you wanted to to mention before we uh because we've still got a few minutes.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Yeah yeah so uh I I have another publication from this um from this data set that came out last year and it was um looking at different forms of social support and organizational commitment um and I I'm happy to send you uh send you that article if you'd like but uh the broad findings there was that the more internal and external social support that women reported um the higher their levels of organizational commitment so something that seems very intuitive right I'm feel supported by my uh by my colleagues by my superiors I also have support you know from friends and family so I feel more committed to the organization I have more to offer them so that was a really cool piece that I got to to publish again with with Kelly Renfro and then another piece that we're working on from that is differences in motivation. So what we were able to look for we used a scale by um oh I'm gonna butcher it um Mike White and I forgot his his colleague or the the co-author's name but it was this motivation to enter policing scale kind of looking at different different reasons why people might join the force. And generally speaking um the you know men that have completed that survey in previous studies, it's you know crime fighting, it's you know saving saving lives those really really important things of course for the women in our sample at least it tended to be like a commitment to the to the community and kind of more or less these like intrinsic motivating factors. So I think you know the reason why men and women might join the force is is likely to to vary right at the at the very beginning of the the episode you had noted you know maybe like a familial connection to the police force for sure. So I think we're seeing at least in our sample we're seeing different reasons why women might be entering policing compared to men. And if that is the case then perhaps we can start kind of tinkering our recruitment tools tinkering how we're presenting the job and how we're advertising it by showcasing hey this is for the community and that goes along with a lot of other research that's really just about painting a realistic picture of what the job is.

SPEAKER_02 29:06

Right. In fact I was looking for um other other topics to discuss and just yesterday I stumbled into an article that dealt specifically with you know the the promotion of the department I didn't get a chance to read read it uh but I I noted it it's like okay maybe this is something that instead of like you say the crushing crime and suppressing evil limits more component of it. Let's look at this because there's the the job is fascinating. I've talked about that in the past. So kind of promoting those kinds of things and then maybe the agency has these unique components that are there as you said the um the childcare which I think is fascinating that uh you know they have those aspects to attract the attention of people that that would be say this is the kind of job I want this is the kind of organization I want to work for.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

Yeah. Yeah yeah ultimately like showcasing an organization that cares for their employees not just as police officers but as humans right giving them you know we could we we could talk for days about pay and those types of like tangible benefits but also just like resources you know our previous chat you know wellness resources but all of these different things to differentiate a department from other departments right make it a more attractive job something that cares about the human behind the uniform. And so I think if agencies start kind of shifting how they're approaching that to match what the younger generations are looking for, then they can start kind of maybe increasing those recruitment numbers a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

Yeah it's not your father's police agency anymore. Exactly Kathleen this was this was really really informative information I I really uh again appreciate you coming back on a second time and putting up with me oh always happy to chat with you you have a great day all the best take care thank you you too bye