Graduation Term
2016
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Department of Criminal Justice Sciences
Committee Chair
Cara Rabe-Hemp
Abstract
Despite gains in the percentage of female police officers over past decades, female police officers are vastly underrepresented in modern policing. Female police officers face barriers to integration into policing and the surrounding culture that male police officers do not face, including unbalanced physical testing, double standards for success, and others. One explanation for the different experiences of female police officers compared to male police officers is the token status of women in policing. Instead of taking the token status of female police officers for granted, this study explored the utility of the theory of tokenism (Kanter, 1977) in explaining the experiences of female police officers in Midwestern police agencies. This is accomplished by looking for the presence of the three constructs of tokenism (visibility, contrast, and assimilation) in the accounts of 37 female police officers.
Access Type
Thesis-Open Access
Recommended Citation
Harper, Cameron Michael, "Token Female Police Officers or Police Exemplars: an Evaluation of the Theory of Tokenism" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 507.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/507
DOI
http://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2016.Harper.C
Included in
Criminology Commons, Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons, Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons