Dynamics of sexual harassment for policewomen working alongside men

The Authors

Chaiyavej Somvadee, The Royal Thai Police Cadet Academy, Nakorn Pathom, Thailand

Merry Morash, School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

Abstract

Purpose – This article aims to examine the sexual harassment experiences of US policewomen by using the Sexual Experience Questionnaire (SEQ) and asking them to describe incidents in which male colleagues’ behavior made them uncomfortable. It seeks to identify areas of discomfort and patterns of response in the context of current harassment policies.

Design/methodology/approach – A convenience sample included 117 female law enforcement officers in the USA from two sheriff, two police, and one state police department. Participants completed surveys in small groups with the researcher present.

Findings – Study participants were especially concerned about male colleagues' view that women could not “do the job”. Sexual harassment policies and the integration of women into work groups with men influenced how women viewed and reacted to discomforting behaviors.

Research limitations/implications – The findings are consistent with those from a broader national sample and international research. Further study of the effects of US women's tolerance of sexual joking and remarks is needed.

Practical implications – Organizational efforts to stop sexual harassment seemed to have brought some benefits to policewomen, as has their integration into all facets of police work. Still, women's concern that male colleagues think they cannot “do the job” persists, and tolerated harassment may negatively affect some women.

Originality/value – The qualitative data analysis shows the complexity of women's tolerance of behaviors in the workplace in order to fit in, and how working along with men heightens concerns about being seen as incapable of doing certain aspects of the job well.

Article Type:

Research paper

Keyword(s):

Sexual harassment; Police; Women workers; Discrimination; Human resource management; United States of America.

Journal:

Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management

Volume:

Number:

Year:

2008

pp:

485-498

Copyright ©

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

ISSN:

1363-951X

In the USA, constant pressure from the women's liberation movement targeting sex based discrimination in employment, court mandates, and the assumption that women can bring positive qualities to policing have resulted in nationwide efforts to recruit women (Martin, 1993). In 1975, women represented 2.2 percent of the sworn personnel in municipal police departments (Martin, 1980). In 2001, women's representation in large agencies was 12.7 percent (National Center for Women and Policing, 2002). Unlike their historical relegation to special jobs working with women and juvenile offenders, US policewomen have been trained and assigned to positions in their departments alongside male officers.

As the participation of women in the workforce has grown over time, sexual harassment has received much attention (Berdahl, 2007; Kennedy and Gorzalka, 2002). Sexual harassment is especially common in male dominated work settings (Gruber, 1998; Mansfield et al., 1991), particularly in blue-collar occupations such as policing (Ragins and Scandura, 1995). Several studies consistently found that more than half of the female officers had experienced sexual harassment in several countries, including Australia (Prenzler and Ransley, 2002; Silvestri, 2003, pp. 29-31; Sutton, 1996), Great Britain (Brown, 1998), and the USA (Bartol et al., 1992; Martin, 1990). A recent large-scale study (Brown and Heidensohn, 2000) of 804 female officers from 35 countries in Europe and American continents found that 77 percent of the sample reported sexual harassment by male coworkers. Heidensohn (1994) also found that women officers thought that dealing with harassment by male colleagues was a greater problem than violent encounters while they were on patrol. Thus, it is clear from a broad literature that sexual harassment of women police officers by their male colleagues deserves continued attention in research.

Numerous forms of harassment have been identified. These include police cadets' sexist jokes and comments about women depicted in teaching materials (Prokos and Padavic, 2002), men's use of derogatory terms such as “girl” and “whore” in talking about women (Martin, 1978), and sexual jokes and materials in the workplace (Martin and Jurik, 2007; Robinson, 1994; Wong, 1984). A study by Wong (1984) revealed that it was common for policewomen to be repeatedly propositioned for many months or even years. Apart from pressure for dates, policewomen also frequently encountered deliberate sexual physical contact (Brown, 1998; Martin, 1980). Sexual coercion, including threats relating to job conditions in exchange for sexual cooperation (Fitzgerald et al., 1997), has also been documented (Robinson, 1994; Segrave, 1995).

The purpose of the present study is to examine the experiences of sexual harassment in contemporary US police departments where sexual harassment and anti-discrimination policies have been in effect for decades and women have been integrated into work groups for many years. The research examined the frequency of behaviors commonly thought to constitute harassment and women's labeling of these behaviors as harassment. It also considered women's standpoint on male coworkers' behaviors that made them feel uncomfortable, their reactions, and the reasons for their reactions. Key objectives of the analysis were to understand the perspectives of women on male coworkers' behaviors and to identify constraints on their reactions that affected their capacity to effectively address troublesome behaviors.

Method

Participants

The sample was not intended to be representative, but instead was chosen to include women from purposively selected departments varying in type (state police headquarters and two posts, two county sheriff departments, a city department, a campus department). The departments were in a Mid-western state, and data were collected during the summer of 2002. After permission to conduct the study had been obtained from each department, AUTHOR1 met with female officers in small groups at the workplace during one or two of the shifts when women would be working. The potential subjects were then invited to participate in the study and, if they agree, they completed the survey, which took 15 to 25 minutes. Of 282 women working in the five departments, 42.9 percent (121) were asked to take part in the research. Of the 121 female officers invited to take part in the study, 4 or 3.3 percent refused to participate due to two reasons:

time limitations; and
concerns for anonymity, resulting in the overall response rate of 96.7 percent.

Thus, the total number of study participants was 117.

Table I shows the total number of sworn officers in each department, separate totals for men and women, the total number of minority women, the number of women interviewed, and the number reporting harassment. Also shown is that the women made up between 13.8 percent and 34.4 percent of the sworn officers in their departments, and depending on the department, from 30.2 percent to 100 percent of the women were interviewed. To provide more variety in the type of departments, higher proportions of women were recruited in departments where they were few women. No special efforts were made to encourage non-white women to participate, but they do not appear to be under or over-represented.

Respondents had a mean age of 35.6 years. A majority were White (71.8 percent). Other racial and ethnic groups were African American (22.2 percent), Hispanic (3.4), American Indian (1.7 percent), and other (0.9 percent). About half of the participants were married (49.6), 13.7 percent were divorced or separated, and 36.8 percent were single. Over half (55.6 percent) of the women had an undergraduate degree and 8.6 percent had a graduate degree.

The officers performed a wide variety of functions. A majority (51.3 percent) did traditional police work including patrol, detective work, and acting as community liaisons, 22.2 percent worked in jail facilities, and 26.5 percent performed administrative duties. Most held positions of officer or deputy (73.5 percent). Also, 15.4 percent were sergeant or detective, and 11.1 percent were lieutenants or higher ranks. Nearly half (42.7 percent) of the respondents reported having supervisory experience. The mean tenure with the police department was 10.3 years. A majority indicated that their work required them to interact primarily with male coworkers rather than primarily with female coworkers (88 percent). A majority planned to stay in police work until retirement (77.8 percent)

Measurement

There is no consensus in the literature on the definition of sexual harassment. The often cited US legal definition is that sexual harassment is unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that interferes with the targets' work conditions (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1980). The legal definition distinguishes between quid pro quo and hostile workplace environment sexual harassment (Witkowska and Kjellberg, 2005). Quid pro quo harassment, which is requiring a sexual act in exchange for job benefits, is more overt and is directed at particular individuals. Hostile working environment sexual harassment involves broader forms, such as lewd jokes, sexist comments, display of sexually suggestive materials, or repeated requests for sexual favors. In order to establish this latter form of harassment, the act needs to be pervasive and repetitive (Van Wormer and Bartollas, 2000). The US Supreme Court case, Meritor Savings Bank FSB v. Vinson (1986), unanimously affirmed that both quid pro quo and hostile environment sexual harassment were prohibited by US law, and that employers could be held responsible for the acts of their employees. Two additional cases (Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 1998 and Burlington Industries v. Ellerath, 1998) further clarified employer's liability in sexual harassment cases. (For a review of relevant court cases, see Martin and Jurik, 2007.) Case law has established that for employers to be held liable for harassment, it does have to be of a serious nature.

Because the meaning and impact of sexual harassment are tied to people's perceptions, not just laws, scholars have examined potential targets' definitions of sexual harassment and classified those behaviors based on empirical data (Fitzgerald et al., 1995; Till, 1980; Witkowska and Kjellberg, 2005). Building on pioneering work by Till (1980), Fitzgerald et al. (1988) developed and used the Sexual Experience Questionnaire (SEQ), which measured three types of harassing behaviors:

gender harassment;
unwanted sexual attention; and
sexual coercion.

(The term, sexual harassment, was not used in most items and the title of the original scale, because of the “ambiguity surrounding this concept as well as individual differences in willingness to apply the term among women who experience similar situations” (Fitzgerald et al., 1999, p. 246).) The tripartite model of sexual harassment, which was validated cross-culturally (Fitzgerald et al., 1995), has become a commonly accepted and widely used typology and measure (Broedel-Zaugg et al., 1999; Matchen and DeSouza, 2000).

For the present study, the SEQ (Fitzgerald et al., 1995; Gelfand et al., 1995) was used to assess acts perpetrated by male officers in the past two years. The 19 items measured the frequency of acts that could be labeled as gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, or sexual coercion. Response choices for items were never, once or twice, sometimes, often, and most of the times. Responses to all SEQ items were summed and the Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.84. The Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the subscales – gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion – were 0.76, 0.82 and 0.84, respectively.

The present research also collected information on women's perceptions of acts that made them feel uncomfortable and reactions to those acts, without being limited by legal definitions or the constraints of a survey instrument with set choices. This approach was consistent with standpoint feminist theory (Harding, 1990), which recognized that research could reveal women's realities by collecting data through open ended questions. It was also consistent with the recommendation of Seklecki and Paynich (2007, p. 28), who after finding that policewomen did not always regard acts that could be harassing as such, wrote that future study should “address how female officers feel about various situations that could be identified as sexual harassment”. It is important to include policewomen's voices regarding acts that made them uncomfortable, and not assume that legal or scholarly definitions of harassment would predetermine the nature of discomforting acts experienced by women.

To collect qualitative data the survey included the following statement: “Based on your experiences with male officers in this agency, please describe things that any male officers have done or said which made you as a woman feel uncomfortable (ambivalent, tongue-tied, embarrassed, annoyed, feeling you were treated inappropriately, etc.). List as many situations as you can. In describing each of these situations, please be specific about what was said and done. Also, briefly explain how you reacted to it and why you reacted that way”.

Analysis

Descriptive frequencies were generated for the women's responses to the SEQ. The qualitative data were examined for themes relevant to the type of incidents that troubled policewomen, their reactions, and the reasons for their reactions.

Results

SEQ responses

Of the 117 participants, 90.6 percent (106) reported at least one SEQ behavior; however, just 58.2 percent of the women indicated that they had been victimized by sexual harassment. Table II includes the percentages of participants who reported having experienced at least one potentially sexually harassing behavior from male officers within the past two years. In the gender harassment category, a majority of the women (86.6 percent) reported suggestive jokes or offensive stories. Nearly half of the respondents (46.1 percent) were exposed to sexist or suggestive materials or jokes; over half (68.3 percent) indicated having been subjected to crude sexual remarks. A similar proportion (69.2 percent) said they were treated differently due to sex. Finally, 53.8 percent of officers indicated they were put down or experienced condescension due to sex, and 51.2 percent said they were subjected to sexist remarks.

Some behaviors were rarely reported. Subtle sexual bribery was reported by 5.1 percent of policewomen. Similarly, when asked if they had ever been in a situation where any male officers in their organizations “made them feel subtly threatened with some sort of retaliation for not being sexually cooperative”, “implied faster promotions or better treatment if they were sexually cooperative”, “made it necessary for them to respond positively to sexual or social invitations in order to be well treated” “received bad treatment for refusing to have sex”, and “made them afraid that they would be treated poorly if they did cooperate sexually”, the range of percentages for experiencing each situation was from 3.4 to 2.5.

Haarr and Morash (2004) found that in the USA, African American women were subjected to higher levels of sexual harassment than were White women. Except for combined racial and gender harassment, for instance a claim that a woman was hired only because she was a female minority, the qualitative analysis did not reveal any clear pattern of differences in the types of harassment for minority and majority groups. The t-tests to compare White and minority women on levels of gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion showed a significant difference only for gender harassment, and the mean was slightly higher (14.1 versus 12.2, df=4, 101, F=2.5, p=0.047) for White women. Although the difference was statistically significant, it was small. Given the small convenience sample of departments and women, it is not appropriate to generalize about the relative levels of sexual harassment experience of minority and White women. However, the patterns in the data limited exploration of such differences in the present study.

Qualitative descriptions of discomforting behavior perpetrated by men

The legal and organizational contexts in the USA supported specific opportunities for men to engage in behaviors that made women feel uncomfortable and some common tendencies in women's reactions. Women were quite concerned with men's communication and actions signifying that women could not “do the job”. In contrast, they described sexual remarks and jokes primarily as not being directed towards specific women and as relatively controllable through direct conversation with the perpetrator. Because women were integrated into work groups with men and were doing the same sort of work, they described participating in some of the sexual joking and remark making as signifying their being “in” the group. They also described many instances when men curbed their behavior to conform to sexual harassment policies, were influenced by women's comments, or apologized for their behavior after being confronted. The specific dynamics of these patterns were revealed in the qualitative responses women made to open ended questions. These data are presented below.

Questioning women's ability to “do the job” The most bothersome situations for the policewomen involved behavioral and verbal sexism of male officers. Repeatedly women pointed to a double standard at work. One officer wrote “I was patting down a male inmate and another officer (male) stepped in and took over-looking like I could not handle the situation”. In one case, a Hispanic woman said that a White male colleague said she had been hired just because she was a minority woman. Others examples were:

The females are often given the job of covering the back door during an entry to a building. The men want to go inside and they usually volunteer the female to stay outside … Most often during a high-risk situation, female officers are given the least important job.

Mainly the only issues that I have had to deal with are men acting like they can handle a situation better than I can. So, for example, if I get a call with a male officer, he would sometimes just step in and assume the authoritative position without letting me do my job because he thinks I can't handle it as well as he can … Some male officers have indicated that they would not want certain female officers as back up. I find that I personally put forth great effort and display courage and assertiveness in said situations to try and earn the respect of fellow male officers. I feel we are earning the same wage, share the same job title, I therefore should be subject to the same risks. I feel good female officers have to try twice as hard to earn half respect as male officers.

The policewomen felt their competence was disregarded and opportunities to display their competence were not offered.

Jokes and remarks signifying “in” or “out” of the workgroup. The qualitative data analysis revealed that officers were not very troubled by jokes and remarks (what would be labeled as gender harassment) if they were not targeted at a specific woman. They expected such talk as a part of the job in male-dominated environment. One officer wrote:

There have been many occasions where male coworkers have made sexually explicit jokes or comments. However, I choose not to take the talk personally. I don't find their behavior offensive, just childish. I don't put any energy into being concerned about what people are joking about … I don't dwell on it.

Policewomen described themselves as part of the work group that included men. One woman indicated that some male officers told sexually explicit jokes or passed internet pictures and jokes around, but they did so discreetly and only with their work group. Several female officers also wrote that these behaviors provided an opportunity for them to be part of the group, and they responded by kidding male officers back. Most believed that if they were in a situation where they felt uncomfortable, they could let the men know and the men would stop. An officer exemplified this view in her statement:

Offensive jokes and comments were made quite frequently, however, I participate in the joking and do not find it offensive. I believe that if I did find it offensive and stated it to my coworkers and supervisors, they would stop. Most male coworkers and supervisors consider me one of the group.

Many policewomen felt that the behaviors of joking and sharing sexually explicit materials were tolerable in the work group, in part because they were part of the group and they could influence men to stop if they wanted to.

A small proportion of women described very offensive behaviors. One woman who worked in the jail said she was humiliated when an officer said to her “She's sweetheart and she swallows too”. The same officer also wrote that a male officer said to her, “I saw you off duty the other day at a party store and thought, ‘I did not know there were prostitutes working in [the township].’” A patrol officer wrote that she witnessed an incident in which a male trooper was greeting a female trooper by putting the back of her hand on his crotch and saying “Good Morning” in a room full of troopers. In an example of mixed racial and gender harassment, a White male officer looked into the locker room, and commented on his surprise that an African American woman's breasts looked like a White woman's. Women typically confronted the offensive person by making a sharp reply, and they often received an apology. For example, an officer who worked in the jail wrote that she saw a male officer calling women “chicks” and after telling him to stop, he apologized and promised not to use that word around her again. The willingness of officers to communicate their dissatisfactions and the willingness of male officers to change or apologize signaled that women acted with some degree of power and influence. Yet, the men still produced a work environment where sexual harassment occurred.

Stopping men's behavior for different types of harassment. Women's ability to influence their male coworkers’ behavior coworkers was also found for incidents involving unwanted sexual attention and the display of explicit sexual materials. Several women described situations when a man made an unreciprocated romantic overture and quickly withdrew. An officer who worked in the court gave an example of a married supervisor from another division who had asked her for a good night kiss and offered to buy her a drink. She noted that she refused “as politely as was possible” and, after the incident, he acted as though he was afraid she would mention it, avoided eye contact, and tried to avoid her.

Women did not provide descriptions of how they contained and stopped unwanted behavior when men questioned women's ability to do the job. Even though many women found such situations offensive, none of them wrote about confronting the male workers or changing the men's behaviors. Perhaps because the concept of competence in police work is closely tied to ideas about masculinity, it would be hard for women to challenge men's beliefs about women's incompetence. Alternatively, policies and training may not directly confront this issue, leaving officers with no shared sense of what is appropriate, and what can be openly challenged.

Discussion

Responses to the SEQ showed that many women who reported at least some of the SEQ behaviors also indicated they had not experienced sexual harassment. In a study of university clerical and administrative staff, Marshall (2003) discovered variation in how women framed acts of harassment, with some ruling out acts they thought the law would not define as serious enough, some viewing acts as acceptable aspects of women's sexual freedom, and others considering acts tolerable unless there were demonstrably negative effects on efficiency and productivity. Like policewomen in the present research, some women tolerated sexual attention as the price of fitting into the male organizational culture. Marshall (2003) warned that ways of looking at harassment that led to tolerance put women at risk of seeming to consent to behaviors that would escalate and create considerable distress for both targets and other women in the work setting.

It is not, however, entirely clear to what degree the women in the present research actually tolerated harassment. When the women respondents in the present study described male colleagues making advances to them, they also described handling the situations and the men backing down and even apologizing. No doubt some policewomen do experience and cannot stop sexual advances; however, due to gender arrangements in the departments that were studied, on average, women were most concerned about job-related gender discrimination, specifically men's questioning whether they could “do the job”. It is possible that women did not make formal complaints about harassment because, as others have found (Marshall, 2005, p. 118), they felt the grievance procedure and supervisors would not protect them. However, women's accounts suggested that in the departments studied, in many instances women could effectively stop harassment by male colleagues.

In their responses to the SEQ and their descriptions of discomforting acts of their male colleagues, the policewomen indicated the persistence of masculine police cultures (also described by Ragins and Scandura, 1995; Gruber, 1997) marked by considerable behavior that could be seen as sexually harassing of women. Prior research has indicated some improvement in the USA, at least for racial majority women (Haarr and Morash, 2004). This improvement may account for the finding that women described situations where they had gender equality, men avoided or stopped behavior seen as harassing or offensive, and some men understood and accepted women's perspective on sexual harassment.

Organizational policy scholars (Connell, 1991; Gruber and Smith, 1995) have concluded that establishing formal policies against sexual harassment is crucial to lowering harassment levels. Organizational policy builds shared definitions of certain acts as wrong, proscribes penalties for the harasser, and thereby deters harassment and tolerance of it (Livingston, 1982; Connell, 1991). Some studies have found that establishing policy and grievance procedures can help reduce the prevalence of sexual harassment (Williams et al., 1992) and weaken supportive beliefs consistent with sexist behaviors (Tinkler et al., 2003). Though many women do not report sexual harassment (for a review, see Marshall, 2005, pp. 86-87), when organizations have developed more extensive methods for dealing with sexual harassment, women have been more likely to adopt assertive reactions (Gruber and Smith, 1995). It may be that in the departments studied, all of which did have established policies, some of the most overt types of harassment have been curtailed.

Study limitations

Although the research drew women from multiple and varied departments, and there is no known uniqueness of the departments or the women sampled, the lack of random samples raises concerns about generalizability. Findings from similar research (Seklecki and Paynich, 2007) on a randomly selected group of US 2000 policewomen (with 535 of the surveys returned) offered some assurance that the present study findings were not unique. Similar to the present study findings, Seklecki and Paynich (2007) discovered that although dirty jokes and stories were common, they were not very bothersome to the respondents, and that although many women reported some behaviors that could be considered harassment, most (72.8 percent) indicated that they had not been sexually harassed. Another similarity between the Seklecki and Paynich (2007) research and the present study was that women regarded many male behaviors, like joking about sex, as common and inherent in a male-dominated job and did not interpret such behaviors as directed at themselves or as particularly offensive.

The present research findings about doubts that women cannot perform well in key aspects of police work is consistent with another study of US policewomen. Heidensohn (1994, p. 293) concluded from her research in the USA that police women did not appreciate overly enthusiastic back-up by male officers at fights and public order incidents, which they viewed as a sign the male officers felt they could not handle the incidents.

Research in Great Britain has provided additional support for the typicality of the findings from the present study. Relevant to women's tolerance of behaviors that might be labeled as harassing, based on ethnographic research, Westmarland (2001, pp. 74-75) gave the example of one police woman's response to her male colleagues' joking about how policewomen should make coffee and wash dishes: “You get that in any job, but if you can't take the criticism or the jokes they direct at you, you shouldn't be in the job.” She documented other instances when women police officers chose to distance themselves from, rather than tolerate or accept, men's misogynist activities that the women viewed as “sick” or “pathetic” (Westmarland, 2001, p. 175). Westmarland (2001) also observed the questioning of women police officer's capacity to do police work involving force and violence as well as men. She found that, contrary to official evidence of women's high involvement in making arrests and handling volatile situations, and regardless of management policies and directives on equal opportunities for women, “for arrests where physical force is required, men are considered to have the necessary skills, whilst their female colleagues, despite evidence that they take part in what might be regarded as the more violent and dangerous incidents, are thought to be in need of protection, or considered simply ‘unsuitable’ for these tasks” (Westmarland, 2001, p. 134).

Implications

A study carried out in Florida (Collins, 2004, p. 512) found that, despite evidence that sexual harassment was pervasive in law enforcement agencies, the Florida Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission, the regulatory body charged with disciplining law enforcement officers, accepted jurisdiction in a very minimal number of cases and even in those, imposed discipline that was often “insubstantial”. Consistent with Seklecki and Paynich (2007) and Westmarland (2001), the present study found that many women tolerated joking and remarks that were technically sexual harassment, and even viewed it as signifying they were “in” the work group with men. Westmarland (2001, p. 184) referred to the resulting “sexualization of the workplace by the male majority”. Police organizations need to consider the implications of high levels of continuing exposure to sexually oriented jokes and remarks in the police department environment, which in some settings appear to be tolerated by regulatory bodies even in the face of complaints by policewomen, or by policewomen who do not complain.

Future research should determine whether such an atmosphere is indeed harmless, or whether it supports other forms of anti-woman behavior that is more frequently seen as unacceptable. Fitzgerald et al. (1997, p. 23) found that negative psychological and work-related outcomes occurred more often for women who experienced harassment than those who did not, even if the women did not label their experiences as harassment. Also, it may be that sexual harassment, even if some women accept it as part of the job, supports the view that they do not accept, which is that they cannot “do the job”. Future research also should consider whether some women who have been exposed to an atmosphere marked by sexual harassment have self selected out of policing, again reflecting that the atmosphere is not benign.

After several decades of women's integration into all facets of police work, the present study found that many women felt they were tested and criticized for being unable to “do the job” as well as men. Women in the USA were historically denied access to law enforcement careers, and later to patrol officer jobs that are necessary for promotion, because they were seen as physically and emotionally weak (Bell, 1982; Homant and Kennedy, 1985; Martin, 1980; Morash and Green, 1986; Tiffin, 1995). For decades, male coworkers were particularly critical of women's abilities (Balkin, 1988; Bell, 1982; Charles, 1982), and women in the present study presented commentary on continued experiences in which they are seen as unfit to “do the job”. Taking a broad look at women in policing across countries, Heidensohn (1994, p. 174) also pointed out that historically the danger and macho camaraderie associated with policing have been viewed as incompatible with the involvement of women in all types of police work. Police departments thus need to consider what organizational change efforts, such as education, supervision practices, increased proportions of women and women supervisors, or leadership activities, might counteract historically rooted views that policewomen are not as capable as policemen.

Police organizations should rely on several indicators of sexual harassment in the organization. It is important to hear from women what behaviors they find to be intolerable and tolerable, and why they feel they can or should tolerate behaviors that could be considered as anti-woman. Women also need to be heard when they explain why they cannot address unwanted behaviors, so that these barriers can be eliminated.

The USA has had many years of experience with sexual harassment legislation and organizational policies, and while they are not always well developed or implemented, the present study suggested that at least in some settings, they are effective. Women seemed to derive some of their power and capacity to confront their coworkers and stop unwanted behavior from the wide recognition that harassing behavior is illegal and not to be tolerated. Yet, it remains troubling that most women reported harassment in the workplace, and many felt it was part of the job and a sign of acceptance, and thus should be tolerated.

Table INumbers and proportions of women and women interviewed in each department

Table IIPercentage of female officers experiencing each type of harassment on the SEQ at least once in two years

References

Balkin, J. (1988), "Why policemen don't like policewomen", Journal of Police Science and Administration, Vol. 16 No.1, pp.29-38.