Special Issue: Women at Work in Criminal Justice Organizations

• DOI: 10.1177/1557085118763391
• Author: Cara E. Rabe-Hemp,Susan L. Miller
• Published date: 01 July 2018
• Date: 01 July 2018
• Subject Matter: Editorial

https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085118763391

Feminist Criminology

2018, Vol. 13(3) 231 –236

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/1557085118763391

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Editorial

Special Issue: Women at

Work in Criminal Justice

Organizations

One of the more enduring feminist concerns is why women remain disadvantaged and

oppressed in the workplace. In criminal justice professions, this debate is shaped not

only by research into the division of labor between men and women in society but also

by the assumptions about gender norms for women working in male-dominated occu-

pations. Before the 1970s, almost all criminal justice employees in the world were

men. Media representations, job descriptions, and institutional policies were gendered

and tied to the male working-class culture. Over the past 40 years, equal opportunity

legislation has sparked a series of legal challenges that discouraged discriminatory or

prejudicial behavior, creating opportunities for women. As women across the world

entered and integrated into criminal justice professions, they were met with discrimi-

nation, harassment, and concern (Brown & Heidensohn, 2000; Hunt, 1990). Research

of this era focused on increasing the numeric representation of women in criminal

justice agencies, to move beyond the “token status” of women in organizations.

Coined in 1977 to explain the unique experiences of women in the business world,

Kanter’s theory of tokenism argued that numeric tokens (i.e., 15% or less of a work-

force) face challenges not experienced by the majority group, including heightened

visibility, isolation from the dominant group, and role encapsulation. Applied to crimi-

nal justice professions, Kanter’s tokenism framework has faced critique for not taking

into account the idea that women in male-dominated professions may experience dis-

crimination, sexual harassment, and segregation not because of a lack of numeric rep-

resentation, but because they are simply women, and as such, their mere presence in

the workplace violates gender norms regarding work (Kanter, 1977/1993).

More recent scholarship recognizes the complexities of inequality and access to

power in criminal justice organizations. The idea that female officers negotiate the

roles associated with their gender and work through a backdrop of hegemonic mascu-

linity, which reinforces the power of men both on the cultural and collective levels

(Martin & Jurik, 2007), acknowledges that hegemonic masculinity is maintained in

criminal justice agencies through authority, heterosexism, the ability to display force,

and the subordination of women (Chan, Doran, & Marel, 2010; Connell, 1995; Martin,

1994; Messerschmidt, 1993). Most recently, Acker (2006) introduced the framework

of inequality regimes, arguing that workplace inequalities are connected to the disad-

vantaging of members of certain social and economic groups through processes that

socially construct the requirements of work which favor the powerful, support organi-

zational class hierarchies embedded with inequality, and bureaucratic decision making

in which inequalities are reproduced.

763391FCXXXX10.1177/1557085118763391Feminist CriminologyRabe-Hemp and Miller

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