Women in law enforcement

Women in law enforcement agencies have typically been outnumbered by men. The first female police officer in Germany was recruited in 1903, the first in the USA appeared in 1910 and the first in England just a few years later. Since that time many law enforcement agencies have sought to reduce discrimination and increase the numbers of women working in this sector.

Overview - Germany

Henriette Arendt was a German Police Officer in 1903.

Overview - Sweden

In 1908, the first three women: Agda Hallin, Maria Andersson and Erica Ström, was employed in the Swedish Police Authority in Stockholm upon the request of the Swedish National Council of Women, who referred to the example of Germany. Their trial period was deemed successful and from 1910 onward, women police officers were employed in other Swedish cities. However, they did not have the same rights as their male colleagues: their title were Polissyster (Police Sister), and their tasks concerned women and children, such as taking care of children brought under custody, perform body searches on women, and other similar tasks which were considered unsuitable for male police officers.

Police

A police force is a constituted body of persons empowered by the state to enforce the law, protect property, and limit civil disorder. Their powers include the legitimized use of force. The term is most commonly associated with police services of a sovereign state that are authorized to exercise the police power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility. Police forces are often defined as being separate from military or other organizations involved in the defense of the state against foreign aggressors; however, gendarmerie are military units charged with civil policing.

Law enforcement, however, constitutes only part of policing activity. Policing has included an array of activities in different situations, but the predominant ones are concerned with the preservation of order. In some societies, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, these developed within the context of maintaining the class system and the protection of private property. Many police forces suffer from police corruption to a greater or lesser degree. The police force is usually a public sector service, meaning they are paid through taxes.

Female

Female (♀) is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, that produces non-mobile ova (egg cells). Most female mammals, including female humans, have two X chromosomes.

Defining characteristics

The ova are defined as the larger gametes in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller, usually motile gamete, the spermatozoon, is produced by the male. A female individual cannot reproduce sexually without access to the gametes of a male (an exception is parthenogenesis). Some organisms can reproduce both sexually and asexually.

There is no single genetic mechanism behind sex differences in different species and the existence of two sexes seems to have evolved multiple times independently in different evolutionary lineages. Patterns of sexual reproduction include