Women in State Law Enforcement: An Exploratory Trend Analysis
Abstract
Gender diversity in policing has never been more important than it is today. However, women in state law enforcement are the least noticeable and most underrepresented of all women in policing. Using data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) surveys, this study examines gender diversity across the 49 primary state law enforcement agencies in the United States between 2000 and 2016. Although representation varies broadly across the states, the findings are mostly negative and suggest that women in state law enforcement have remained stagnant over the past two decades with very little improvement. This is important because scholarship must continue to bring attention to the underrepresentation of women in law enforcement, regardless of intergovernmental level, and monitor its progress.
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Biographies
Helen H. Yu is an associate professor and graduate chair of the Public Administration Program at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. She is a human resource management, criminal justice, and social equity scholar.
Shilpa Viswanath is an assistant professor of public administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY. She earned her PhD from Rutgers University – Newark SPAA, and her research focuses on gender equity in public sector human resource management and comparative public administration.
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Article first published online: March 21, 2022
Issue published: May 2022
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