Where the Women Aren"t

Women in law enforcement still are not represented proportionately. This is much better than when I started. Most of the movies and TV shows depicted women officers or investigators as secondary figures and the men as primary figures. Crime novels were the same; however, recently I have a read a few books concerning female police officers in primary roles. Reading them got me thinking about the female roles and ultimately into starting this blog. These are good reads broth from the law enforcement, criminal investigation, and females in high law enforcement position aspects.

The first of these is Every Last Secret by Linda Rodriguez (Linda Rodriguez blog). This book is about a female chief of the campus police at a fictional college in the Midwest. I hear we will get to see our chief in action in future books by this author. Linda Castillo has written a series of books depicting a female police chief in an Amish Ohio community.  The books are entitled Sworn to Silence, Pray for Silence, Breaking Silence, and Gone Missing (lindacastillo.com).

What can explain this phenomenon? When in college years ago (I won’t mention when) I did reading, research, and the writing of papers pertaining to “why people choose to be cops.” As in most studies at that time, most of the information available concerned males. I am not sure about current literature. I don’t want to do quotes and footnotes so I will speak merely from my experience and observations throughout the years.

The majority of girls in our society were not groomed in the shooting of firearms both through hunting and target practice with their fathers as many boys are. Girls are not encouraged to learn to fight and to become strong, again as many boys are. Then there are the simple physiological differences such as more girls than boys cannot make the height requirement. (I had to make sure my height was measured in the morning because by late afternoon and evening I was about one quarter inch too short.) There is also this PMS thing. I like to think I was tough and could control my emotions and I usually could except for about two days of every month when I would get upset or cry at the most ridiculous things. Never in public did I loose my emotional control because that would have been unprofessional, but I did many times in my patrol car or office. Plus add the inconvenience when you need to spend several hours on surveillance or guarding a crime scene.

I hope you as readers don’t find this distasteful, but it’s actually kind of funny. I was going  on eight hours of foot patrol and would not be returning to the station during that time. How was I to carry enough feminine products for that time of the month? It was summer so I wasn’t wearing a coat or jacket. I had tools and equipment I needed to put in my pant pockets.  And of course there was a little vanity involved in that I didn’t want too many things in my pockets that could make me look fat. So what I did was slip several tampons inside the black boots I was wearing. Well to make a long story short my feet and ankle area sweated and the tampons soaked up the sweat and they expanded causing much discomfort.  I learned my lesson, after that I placed them in a plastic baggie before slipping them into my boots.

I look forward to seeing more strong women in law enforcement in our various media formats. Think we will see this?

Until tomorrow,

Sally S