A Comparison of Women’s Motivations to Enter the Police Profession in the Caribbean
Author | Wendell C. Wallace,Malisa Neptune-Figaro |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/15570851211058789 |
Published date | 01 December 2022 |
Date | 01 December 2022 |
Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Feminist Criminology
2022, Vol. 17(5) 567–586
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/15570851211058789
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A Comparison of Women’s
Motivations to Enter the
Police Profession in the
Caribbean
Wendell C. Wallace
1
, and Malisa Neptune-Figaro
1
Abstract
Absent from the criminological literature on policing in the Caribbean are studies on
female’s motivations to become police officers, studies using female police recruits and
studies using a comparative approach. As a result of this gap, data were gathered from
female police recruits in Jamaica (N= 37) and Trinidad and Tobago (N= 60) in July 2017
via a standardised, self-administered questionnaire in order to determine their mo-
tivations for entry into policing. The main motivation for female’s entry into policing in
both jurisdictions was job security. Revenge and the desire for power and authority
were the least cited motivations for entry into the police profession in both juris-
dictions. The importance of females as police officers, study limitations and directions
for future research are also discussed.
Keywords
females, police recruits, motivations, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago
Introduction
Policing emergedin the 19th century as a male only occupation(Carrington et al., 2019).
Therefore, policing is often held out as a male-dominated field, one of the most
1
The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
Corresponding Author:
Wendell C. Wallace, Department of BehaviouralSciences, The University of the West Indies at St Augustine,
Room 7, Carmody Road, Behavioural Sciences Building, St Augustine 868, Trinidad and Tobago.
Email: Wendell.Wallace@sta.uwi.edu
masculinised occupations of the world (Chan & Ho, 2013;Chen, 2015;Diaz & Nuño,
2021;Mukherjee, 2018;Randhawa & Narang, 2013;Veldman et al., 2017)aswellasa
male preserve (Archbold& Schulz, 2012;Punnoose, 2013). The maleness of policing is
highlighted in research findings by Kringen (2014) and Status of Women (2014) which
identified thatglobally, women represent about 13% of all individuals in policing and by
Brown et al. (2020) and Diaz and Nuño (2021) who cogitate that females continue to be
underrepresented in policing. The result of this ‘hegemonic masculinity’in policing
(Deans, 2015;Shelley et al., 2011) is that there is a preponderance of malesover females
in police services globally (Aquino, 2014).
Despite its inherent maleness, policing as a profession has changed over time and
increasingly females are joining police departments in many jurisdictionsas police work
is now viewed as a desirable career for them (Horne, 2006). As more and more females
are entering the police profession (Christie, 1996;Coleman et al., 2018), the previously
entrenched ‘hegemonic masculinity’(a societal pattern in which stereotypically male
traits are idealized and where men maintaindominant social roles over women–Conn ell
& Messerschmidt , 2005) is gradually being whittled away and ‘slowly becoming a
symbol of the past’(Deans,2015, p. 45). Instructively, hegemonic masculinity is bad for
policing due to gender inequality (Jewkes et al., 2015) and the fear ass ociated with
reporting victimization by femalevictims (Tuomey & Jolly, 2009). With the pro positions
of Deans (2015) and Horne (2006) in mind, it is important to bothgarner and illuminate
the experiences of females as police officers as all too often their voices are lost in
narratives about policing. In addition, given the increase in the number of females being
employed in the policeprofession (Christie, 1996), it is appropriate to enquire about their
rationales for becoming police officers.
Globally, there is an abundance of research on females in policing (see Chen, 2015;
Chu, 2018;Chu & Abdulla, 2014;Guajardo, 2016;Khanikar, 2016;Lancaster-Ellis,
2013;National Institute of Justice, 2019;Prenzler & Sinclair, 2013;Shelley et al.,
2011). However, a great majority of the existing research on females in police de-
partments focuses on female police officers as tokens in policing, marginalization by
male peers and sexual harassment of policewomen. Concomitantly, there is a paucity of
research on factors leading to female’s interest in the police profession (Vermeer et al.,
2020;White et al., 2010). Even rarer are (1) cross-national, (2) cross-cultural com-
parative studies on women in policing (Millie & Hirschler, 2018), (3) comparative
research on female’s motivations to enter policing and (4) limited studies focussing on
police recruits (see Chan, 2001;Charman, 2017 as exceptions).
The authors of this article argue that there is a visible absence of data on female
motivations for pursuing careers as police officers in the Caribbean (see Flavin &
Bennett, 2001;Lancaster-Ellis, 2013 for support) and submit that this absence is an
egregious omission as well as an existing lacuna in the literature on policing in the
Caribbean. As a result of this lacuna, the authors sought to counterbalance the mono-
sexual tradition of academic thought by introducing information on policewomen and
their motivations to enter the police profession in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
This was achieved through investigating and comparing the motivations of female
568 Feminist Criminology 17(5)
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