Gender and policing: sex, power and police culture

Abstract

Gender and Policing is an innovative study of the real world of street policing and the gender issues which are a central part of this. Derived from extensive ethnographic research (involving police responses to gangland shootings, high speed car chases as well as more routine policing activities), this book examines the way police attitudes and beliefs combine to perpetuate a working culture which is dependent upon traditional conceptions of ‘male’ and ‘female’. In doing so it challenges previously held assumptions about the way women are harassed, manipulated and constrained, focusing rather on the more subtle impact of structures and norms within police culture