Date of Award

3-15-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Department of Criminal Justice Sciences

First Advisor

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.

Comments

Imported from ProQuest Harper_ilstu_0092N_10713.pdf

DOI

http://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2016.Harper.C

Page Count

93

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