ABSTRACT
Have female officers come a long way in the male world of policing? Since women’s entrance into this occupation in the 1880s, their acceptance into the working environment and their performance assessments are issues examined and debated with great interest. Reactions to the female police officer who ended the Fort Hood massacre in 2009 ranged from calling her a “mighty mouse” to describing her performance as “amazing and aggressive” (Simon & Spellman, 2009). The majority of the leading news stories mentioned little about her as a female police officer, focusing instead on her bravery and quick action under fire. However, this inattention to sex and gender contrasts vividly with female officers’ continued experience of resistance to their presence and barriers to advancement, which exist in policing both in the United States and abroad (for some studies of women and policing abroad see Brown & Heidensohn, 2000; Natarajan, 2008; Sun & Wasileski, 2010).
