A gendered assessment of police officers’ views towards promotion, specialized units, and expected rank at retirement

Abstract

Abstract Women are vastly underrepresented among the police officers who work in supervisory and specialized unit capacities. While prior research has identified numerous potential barriers to the advancement of women within policing, there have been few direct comparisons of how these factors might differentially impact male and female officers when it comes to the importance they place on being promoted, moving to a specialized unit, and their expected rank at retirement. To help address these limitations, the current study draws on survey data from a sample of 565 patrol officers employed at a large metropolitan agency. Using a series of multivariate analyses, factors such as officer gender, race, tenure, and job satisfaction were all found to be consistently linked with the outcome variables. The gender-specific models also uncovered that while being a parent had a marginal negative association with female officers’ views towards the importance of moving to a specialized unit, having prior military experience was positively linked with specialized unit importance among women. Further, female officers were also more likely to choose detective as their expected rank at retirement when compared to males. With these findings in mind, this study closes with a discussion of several policy implications and areas for future research to expand.