Evaluating Women On Patrol

This article provides an empirical analysis and a qualitative assessment of the major evaluations of policewomen's performance: A number of problems common to research on women are identified. In particular, there is a tendency to emphasize situations and characteristics associated with a male stereotype. Also, policewomen are often evaluated on criteria unrelated to police performance and in situations unrepresentative of police work. Other difficulties with evaluations of policewomen include a failure to control for Type 1 error for multiple tests; a disregard for variance in the consideration of female-male differences; disregard for workplace variation as a possible explanation of female-male differences; and the lack of methods to identify frequent tasks, important tasks, and good performance. The types of problems that characterize the research on policewomen should be avoided in evaluations of people in any jobs that are dominated by one gender group.