Women in law enforcement; such as: police officers, corrections or probation officers; is a good example of how women continue to be oppressed by these traditional gender roles. Women in law enforcement is a relatively new thing. Women first entered into law enforcement and corrections in the United States during the early nineteenth century. However, women were not given the same responsibilities and opportunities until U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Opportunity Employment Act of 1972. In 1845, New York Police Department became the first police agency to hire a women to only work in the capacity of matrons or social workers that assisted with women and children. It would take approximately 40 additional years before other cities across the United States would began utilizing women officers as matrons. However, in 1893, Chicago would appoint the first woman “patrolman” with the ability and powers of arrest. This was a huge breakthrough for women in law enforcement and pave the way for many other female law enforcement and correction officers. Although in 2011 regardless of women making up 58 percent of the nation’s workforce, female officers were still viewed as the minority in law enforcement only making up 12 percent. (Hendrickson, P. …show more content…
However, some efforts have been made to achieve equality by judicial system in order to eliminate inequalities. Kearney & Sellers Sex on The Dock: Reports of State Task Forces on Gender Bias describes the influence the political and economic powers have on courts and legal profession in the aspect of the judicial systems. In the early 1980’s, 39 states, the District of Columbia, and nine of the 13 federal circuits entrenched a task force to investigate gender bias within the judiciary. The article done by Kearney & Sellers was based on the examination of 34 final state reports related to this topic. In the 1970’s women only amounted to 15 percent of attorneys and 4 percent of judges. By 1986, a Conference of Chief Justices urged each state chief justice to establish gender bias task forces to tackle gender biases within judicial systems. Task forces were then created by the states supreme court or judicial council in all by eight