1. The Sociology of Gender; 2. Ideology and Images of Women and Policing; 3. Past and Current Status of Women Police in the Eastern Hemisphere; 4. Past and Current Status of Women Police in the Western Hemisphere; 5. Recruitment, Training, and Promotion of Women in the Gendered Police Organization; 6. Gendered Policing: Working Conditions and Gender-Based Violence; 7. Revisiting the Police Organization: Future Directions
Venessa Garcia, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at New Jersey City University. She has served as Deputy Editor and Editorial Board Member of Feminist Criminology since 2005. She has published extensively in the area of women in law enforcement, victims of crime, and media and crime. Her latest book is Women Police Across the Globe: Shared Challenges and Successes in the Integration of Women Police Worldwide (2020, edited with Cara Rabe-Hemp).
"This book is a long-overdue global account of how policing is
gendered wherever it occurs as known through myriad studies about
women and policing since the 1970s. Garcia takes a bird's eye view
of the facts on the ground, in addition to conducting original
research, and shows that gender difference and gender
stratification within police forces form the dominant themes in
policing and gender across societies. By exploring the police
subculture of institutionalized masculinity and its emanation
across time and space, she provides a compelling explanation for
why women are almost universally underrepresented in police forces,
marginalized and rejected by other officers, and often relegated to
gender-restricted duties. This is an important work that calls
attention to a profession that exhibits more barriers to gender
balance than most. Garcia asks police reformers to take seriously
comprehensive policies that would achieve gender equity and provide
pathways for women in policing through deliberate programs of
recruitment, training, mentorship, and protection from sexual
harassment. With less than one in ten police officers in the world
being non-male on average, this book is a timely clarion call and a
significant contribution to police studies."
-Staci Strobl, Professor, Criminal Justice,
UW-Platteville"Venessa Garcia has produced a remarkable book
filling a vacuum in the current literature on women in policing by
providing a panoramic account across five continents combining
historic, cultural, geo-political and sociological analyses. With
meticulous research unearthing previously uncharted details of the
origins of women's entry into policing in Africa, Asia, Eastern
Europe and Latin America combined with supporting contemporary
statistics and enriched by personal interviews with former
officers, this is a model of comparative analysis. The framing of
the position of women in a wider context, enables a deeper
understanding of the police occupational culture not only to
explain the subordination of female officers but also providing the
template for radical police reform."
-Jennifer Brown, Visiting Professor at Mannheim
Centre for Criminology at the London School of Economics and
Political Science"Women in Policing around the World is a
much needed and timely addition to police literature. The police
profession is currently under severe assault, based on claims of
racism and brutality; however, police organizations across the
globe also have a long history of discrimination and sexual
harassment against its female employees. This book sheds a very
bright light on the decades' long institutional injustices from the
historical as well as sociological perspective up to 2020, where
policewomen are still treated as inferior to their male
counterparts.The way the author approaches the problem, from a
global and comparative perspective, addressing issues of prescribed
roles that, frequently, drive decisions about recruitment, training
and promotions, is extremely compelling and creates a picture of a
sisterhood in misery. It is a must read for scholars who focus on
gender roles and discrimination, police culture and police ethics
but, first and foremost, for all the law enforcement practitioners
who aspire to change, in a transformational manner, police
organizational cultures regardless of the size or geographic
location of their departments."
-Maria (Maki) Haberfeld, Professor of Police
Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice"The research Garcia
collected reveals that mentoring within the police organization
increases job performance, growth, and job satisfaction. In
addition to providing promotional opportunities, Garcia emphasizes
the necessity of reform in police culture by providing suggestions
on how to improve the work conditions of our women in blue around
the world. This publication focuses on various aspects of women in
law enforcement and women who struggle to find equality within
society. It is the most comprehensive work on women police around
and is a must-read for anyone in the field."
-Caitlyn Tannu, New Jersey City University,
ASC Division on Women and Crime, DivisioNews, Spring 2022
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