成人VR视频

Jennifer Merluzzi

George Washington University

Women鈥檚 Representation in Policing and Officer Use of Force in Citizen Interactions

Date: Friday, March 13, 2026
Time:10:30 AM -12:00 PM
Location: Virtual (ZOOM)

All are cordially invited to attend.

Abstract:

Efforts to increase women鈥檚 representation in law enforcement often assume that adding women officers will result in lower officer use-of-force rates and improve public trust. This logic rests on robust evidence that women officers, on average, use less force than men officers. Yet, this baseline overlooks how the behavior of incumbent officers might change with shifts in the gender composition of a masculine occupation. Using 13 years of longitudinal data from the Chicago Police Department, including more than one million monthly observations of approximately 13,000 frontline officers, we examine how changes in the gender composition of a police district correspond with an individual officer鈥檚 use-of-force behavior in citizen interactions. Integrating social identity theory with research on masculinity contest cultures and gendered status beliefs, we predict and find that as the proportion of women officers in a police district increase, a man officer propensity to use force increases. A positive but statistically insignificant pattern also emerges for a woman officer. These findings challenge the assumption that adding more women into law enforcement automatically reduces aggressive police response. Instead, we underscore the need for diversification goals to anticipate incumbent worker behavior in occupations where workers strongly associate with the masculine identity of the work. We conclude with practical guidance for designing more effective policies to support gender integration in policing and other traditionally male-dominated occupations.