What explains variation in representation in the public sector? Predicting the presence of female officers in U.S. College Police Departments

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• Author: Amanda Rutherford,Emily Mee
• Date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13586

RESEARCH ARTICLE

What explains variation in representation in the public sector?

Predicting the presence of female officers in U.S. College

Police Departments

Amanda Rutherford|Emily Mee

O’Neill School of Public and Environmental

Affairs, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Correspondence

Amanda Rutherford, O’Neill School of Public and

Environmental Affairs, 1315 E Tenth Street,

Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.

Email: aruther@indiana.edu

Abstract

Scholars and practitioners regularly call for higher levels of representation for

marginalized groups in public agencies, and representative bureaucracy research

commonly boasts the effects of representation on clientele perceptions and per-

formance outcomes. Before the consequences of representation can be fully

assessed, it is important to consider the mechanisms that shape the extent to

which minority groups are present in an agency. We use data from the Federal

Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report and the U.S. Department of Educa-

tion to examine what factors influence female representation in 142 College Police

Departments (CPDs) within public, 4-year institutions of higher education, an epi-

center of debate regarding gender-based violence, between 2014 and 2018. We

find that few organizational characteristics consistently predict female representa-

tion. Our interpretations of such findings are informed by interviews with female

CPD officers and consideration of whether female representation has any associa-

tion with outcomes regarding sexual assault and rape.

Evidence for Practice

•Formal legislation such as policies regarding quotas or affirmative action as well

as internal strategies like managing for diversity or diversity, equity, and inclu-

sion training have been used across government settings to increase the repre-

sentation of specific groups with varying levels of success.

•While calls for more proportional levels of representation in the public sector

continue, less is known regarding what factors encourage or limit observed

levels of representation for minoritized groups in substantive ways.

•In the context of Campus Police Departments (CPDs) at public colleges and uni-

versities in the United States, where women constitute an average of 15 percent

of sworn officers, organizational resources, local labor pools, and local political

leanings fail to shape the extent of female representation.

•Interviews with female CPD officers suggest that representation has improved

but remains low due to factors such as the masculine and insular culture of law

enforcement agencies, professional socialization processes, and mixed reactions

of peers and clientele to interacting with female officers.

INTRODUCTION

Research on representative bureaucracy explores the

effect of the demographic composition of bureaucrats on

the performance of public agencies and the attitudes of

citizens towards government under the assumption that

a proportionally representative agency can substantially

shape the implementation of public policy, serve to

Received:7September2021 Revised:30November2022 Accepted:1December2022

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13586

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribu tion and reproduction in any medium, provided the

original work is properly cited.

© 2022 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:895–910. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar 895

transmit civic values, and encourage citizen cooperation

with bureaucrats, all of which lead to improved outcomes

for stakeholders (Kingsley, 1944; Mosher, 1982;

Thompson, 1976). Empirical results from dozens of studies

in public administration support the notion that represen-

tation can improve policy outcomes, for example, in the

context of home loan programs (Selden, 1997), child sup-

port (Wilkins & Keiser, 2006), and educational advance-

ment (Meier & Rutherford, 2016) either through the

actions of minority bureaucrats or reactions by majority

group bureaucrats or service recipients. Recent work, in

considering the ways in which representation sends an

important signal that shapes the perceptions of citizens,

has found that the symbolic effect of representation may

be determined by the past experiences of clientele and

perceived agency representation (e.g., Cabral et al., 2022;

Headley et al., 2021) such that the field has developed a

more nuanced understanding of the boundaries within

which representation is effective.

Amid continued reports of inequitable treatment of

minoritized citizens, calls for increased representation of

underserved groups in bureaucratic settings continue,

both in the academy and among popular media outlets

in contexts that span education, law enforcement, health

and human services, and the civil service (e.g., Andrews &

Miller, 2013; Nicholson-Crotty et al., 2016). However, while

research in the field has attempted to consider the aver-

age effect of representation as well as environments and

structures that work to limit the expected benefits of rep-

resentation (Bishu & Kennedy, 2020; Ding et al., 2021), less

attention has been given to the organizational character-

istics that encourage representation to exist in a public

agency in the first place (for exceptions see Kennedy

et al., 2017; Warner et al., 1989). Without knowledge of

what levers may be used to alter representation in the

public sector, where expectations, values, and goals gen-

erally stem from the conscious and unconscious biases of

the majority (Portillo et al., 2020), the meaningful inclu-

sion of minoritized groups may continue to suffer in some

agencies and face explicit backlash in others.

The goal of this study is to explore what organiza-

tional characteristics shape representation in public sector

organizations. We approach this question in the context

of Campus Police Departments (CPDs) at institutions of

higher education across the United States. CPDs may gen-

eralize to a limited number of additional contexts but pre-

sent an important space for studying representation.

CPDs are positioned as subunits within colleges and uni-

versities that vary widely in size, location, and mission but

report similar outcome data. More importantly, CPDs are

law enforcement agencies that are immediately proxi-

mate to ongoing concerns surrounding gender-based vio-

lence and sexual misconduct that have become

increasingly salient in institutions of higher education

since Title IX was established in 1964 (Dolamore &

Richards, 2020). Yet, CPDs, like other types of law enforce-

ment agencies, primarily consist of male officers and have

not achieved proportional representation for women

despite the fact that women make up over half of the stu-

dent population at many colleges and universities in the

United States (Johnson, 2017).

Our models indicate that the demographics of an

institution’s student body have some association, albeit

small, with the gender composition of a CPD, while addi-

tional institutional and environmental characteristics we

are able to measure have little effect on representation. In

attempting to understand why our models fail to explain

variation in representation, we conduct interviews with a

small sample of female CPD officers and test whether rep-

resentation appears capable of influencing gendered

outcomes.

LEVERS FOR SHIFTING REPRESENTATION IN

ORGANIZATIONS

While cognizant of some limitations to the efficacy of

minority representation in multiple settings due to limited

discretion, selection effects, socialization, and tokenism

(Gidengil & Vengroff, 1997; Meier & Morton, 2015),

scholars, practitioners, and media pundits regularly

encourage organizations to enhance representation

(Meier, 2019; Riccucci & Van Ryzin, 2017; Sans, 2019; U.S.

Department of Justice, 2015). Prescribed strategies to

achieve higher levels of representation range from

requirements imposed by national or subnational govern-

ments to internal attempts to foster inclusive cultures and

encourage best practices for recruiting, retaining, and

promoting individuals from minoritized backgrounds.

In terms of government-mandated practices, quotas,

particularly those promoting the representation of

women or ethnic and racial minority groups in elected

positions, spread rapidly throughout Latin America, Asia,

Africa, and the Middle East in the late 20th and early 21st

centuries, though incremental models were present in

Nordic countries much earlier (Dahlerup, 2006; Tripp &

Kang, 2008). In some cases, these quotas are designed to

be voluntarily adopted by political parties; in others, they

are required through constitutional provisions or legisla-

tive action. The motive to adopt a quota and the resulting

degree of compliance has observed considerable variance

(Reynolds, 1999). Further, while quotas can reflect con-

cerns for equal representation, cultural beliefs and a

range of explicit and implicit biases can work against the

success of these groups once in office (e.g., Franceschet &

Piscopo, 2008).

More recently, quotas have extended beyond national

legislatures to high level bureaucratic positions as well as

corporate governing boards. Franceschet and Piscopo

(2013) argue this type of diffusion highlights the assump-

tion by many states that minority groups will take on

active roles as guarantors rather than promoters of equity.

Though institutionalizing quotas is less commonly

observed for bureaucratic positions compared to those

896 VARIATION VARIATION IN REPRESENTATION IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR