Women in policing in the United States, colloquially known as women police or female cop, began as early as the 1890s. Women make up 12.6% of all U.S. sworn police officers in 2018. Employed largely as prison matrons in the 19th century, women took on more and increasingly diverse roles in the latter half of the 20th century. They face a particular set of challenges given the history of their entry into the profession, their low rates of participation, and the complex identities they negotiate in the work place. Women who work in law enforcement have struggled for years to gain acceptance in their workplace. Some of their biggest challenges are their lack of representation, stereotypes around women, and intersectionality.
Organizations such as the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives (NAWLEE) offer mentoring services to women, guiding newly appointed head female officers to become better leaders. Commander Kristen Ziman of the Aurora (Illinois) Police Department, and also head of NAWLEE, stated that although yes, women are still oppressed today, some of it is self inflicted.
History
Early entry into the profession
Women entered the criminal justice professions in the early 1800s, employed primarily as prison matrons. Their primary responsibilities were to ensure the well-being of women and children in jails. Many women became involved in social and moral reform movements in the late 1880s and early 1900s, which facilitated their visibility in the sphere of policing and public vigilance. These moral reform movements concerned themselves with eliminating gambling, prostitution, public obscenity, alcoholism and other behaviors they considered vices. Marie Owens is believed to be the first professional police woman in the United States, joining the Chicago Police Department in 1891. Other early police officers include Alice Stebbins Wells, commissioned as an officer in 1910 in Los Angeles, and Lola Baldwin, an early policewoman working for the Portland Police Department on women's and children's issues. She officially began her work in 1908, but some draw distinctions between their arrest powers and the content of their work. The policewomen that followed Owens, Stebbins Wells, and Baldwin in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and onward fit a certain profile. They were often middle or upper class women who found their inspiration in moral reform and counseling movements. Indeed, these movements often served as advocates for including women in the policing profession as well as organizations such as the Federation of Women's Clubs, The League of Women Voters, and the National Women's Christian Temperance Union. Supporting the inclusion and growth of women in the police force aligned with the mission of these organizations, many of which sought to expand women's roles in civic and public life. 1915 saw the creation of the International Association of Policewomen, which worked to advocate for more opportunities for women in policing. The work of these early policewomen often involved desk work, supervision, and counseling of criminals. This counseling was geared mostly to vulnerable groups considered to be part of the purview of women's policing: prostitutes, runaways and wayward children among others. In accordance with the times, a 1933 Policewoman's Guidebook describes many of the routine details of a policewoman's work, which included: patrolling and questioning individuals such as lost children, "children in street trades," truants and runaways, unemployed and homeless women and girls, "sexual delinquents", women suffering from mental disorders, combatting the distribution of "salacious literature" and dealing with petty thieves and shoplifters. These tasks reflect the orientation towards moral reform that characterized women's roles in the policing profession in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The first policewomen in the United States included Marie Owens, who joined the Chicago Police department in 1891; Lola Baldwin, who was sworn in by the city of Portland in 1908; Fanny Bixby, also sworn into office in 1908 by the city of Long Beach, California; and Alice Stebbins Wells who was initiated into the Los Angeles Police Department in 1910. Mary D. Diehl and L. M. Gillespie then became two of the first women sworn in by the city of Philadelphia in 1913. Their hiring was announced in newspapers across the United States.
The first African American policewomen to join the force include Cora Parchment, who was sworn into the New York Police Department, and Georgia Ann Robinson, who was sworn into the LAPD in 1919.