Does Gender Matter?

Using data from systematic social observations of
police-citizen encounters, this work explores gender
differences in police utilization of controlling and
supporting behaviors. By assessing the impact of
intervening situational and organizational factors,
the study underscores the conditions under which
female officers utilize different behaviors from
their male counterparts. Findings suggest that women
are much less likely than men to utilize extreme
controlling behaviors, such as threats, physical
restraint, search, and arrest. Surprisingly, the
findings do not support the hypothesis that women
are more likely than men to use supporting behaviors
or to de-escalate discordant police-citizen
encounters. While unexpected, these findings are
important. Simply assuming female officers manifest
stereotypically feminine traits in policing tasks is
clearly an overgeneralization and a simplistic
conceptualization of the meaning and impact of
gender in policing. The implications for female
officers, policing, and future research are
discussed.