The Myth and Reality of Affirmative Action: A Study Using the Perceptions of Female Police

In spite of the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, Title VII provisions and various executive orders prohibiting discrimination in human resource practices, female police officers remain heavily concentrated in the lowest level positions of many police departments in the United States. To date, the only solution for improving the employment status of women in policing has been affirmative action. While affirmative action plans/initiatives have lead to some improvements in female officers' statuses, additional progress could be made if the plans were strongly enforced by all police departments. This work explores police officers' perceptions of the impact that affirmative action plans/initiatives have had on the recruitment, hiring, promotion, and retention of female officers. Using convenience sampling, 109 currently employed sworn male and female police officers from the three largest police departments in a rural area of the South were surveyed. Quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques were used to analyze the findings. The data revealed that the number of female police officers in the departments studied was small. The data suggests that there is a lack of enforcement of affirmative action plans/initiatives by each department.