Police gathering reflects promising steps for women
EDITORIAL, Published in the Home News Tribune (NJ), May 1, 2004
A Recent gathering of law-enforcement officers at the Middlesex County Fire Academy in Sayreville reflected a slow but constructive change in police work. About 185 officers from around the state attended the gathering and all of them were women. It was, in fact, the first comprehensive statewide conference ever held for women in the field.
Women in police uniforms still get a second look, but their numbers are growing. In Middlesex County, for example, the female ranks have grown from around a dozen 20 years ago to about 90 now, according to one of the participants in the recent conference, Eveleen Fitzgerald, an officer in Highland Park.
This change reflects the gradual crumbling of the chauvinistic idea that women by nature are somehow unfit for the rigors of police work. It also calls attention to the fact that women not only can do the work but many bring to it some valuable skills for instance, the ability to work undercover more readily because females dont fit the stereotypical image of police officers, the ability to bring calm to a tense situation, and the ability to deal with troubled citizens one-on-one.
Acceptance of women in police work and remember that women still are very much in the minority in the ranks is one small step in the much larger process in which opportunities of every kind are becoming more open to females. We can tell how far we have gone by the lopsided gender profiles in Congress, in state legislatures, and in supervisory oppositions in many professional and commercial fields. This year, for instance, there are only 73 women serving in the Congress 14 in the Senate, and 59 in the House. Women more than half the population- comprise only 22.4 present of state legislatures in the country.
But the good news is that the movement is in the right direction, and nothing can stop it now.
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