Gender and Policing Sex, power and police culture

Gender and Policing is an innovative study of the real world of street policing and the gender issues which are a central part of this. Derived from extensive ethnographic research (involving police responses to gangland shootings, high speed car chases as well as more routine policing activities), this book examines the way police attitudes and beliefs combine to perpetuate a working culture which is dependent upon traditional conceptions of 'male' and 'female'. In doing so it challenges previously held assumptions about the way women are harassed, manipulated and constrained, focusing rather on the more subtle impact of structures and norms within police culture.

Gender and Policing will be of interest to all those concerned with questions of policing and gender, and occupational culture more generally, while the theoretical framework developed will provide an important foundation for strategies of reform. At the same time the book provides a vivid and richly textured picture of the realities of operational policing in contemporary Britain.

Preface 1. Policing and the gendered body 2. Gendered specialists: dealing with women 3. Sexual deployment: offending decency 4. Gender arrests: differential rates 5. Cars, guns and horses: masculinity 6. Masculinities, the body and policing

Louise Westmarland is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the Open University. Her research interests include gender and the police, violence, and ethics in the criminal justice system.