New “Face,” Same Body: Opportunities and Limitations of Women’s Representation in the Police

Scholars have long wondered how the representation of women in political and bureaucratic institutions shapes policies that affect marginalized groups, as well as perceptions of government legitimacy (Keiser et al. Reference Levy and Mattsson2002; Meier Reference Meier and Nicholson-Crotty1975; Meier and Stewart Reference Miller and Segal1992; Mosher Reference Pearson and McGhee1982). There are two main ways that female police may alter police behavior regarding rape: they may increase victims’ willingness to report rape and increase police effectiveness in arresting perpetrators. Although our empirical analysis considers the crime of rape, our theory can apply more broadly to other crimes, especially ones that disproportionately affect women, such as domestic violence or sexual assault.

Women in political positions and public office are often perceived and evaluated differently by the public than their male counterparts. Research on female legislative candidates finds that gender stereotypes harm evaluations and perceptions of those candidates, that women must be more qualified than men to win races, and that they must outperform men once they are in office to retain their position (Anzia and Berry Reference Anzia and Berry2011; Bauer Reference Bauer2019; Reference Bauer2020; Pearson and McGhee Reference Rabe-Hemp2013). Although there are certainly stereotypes that can harm female political candidates and politicians, some research finds that gender diversity within institutions positively affects public perceptions of those institutions. Institutional gender diversity may increase perceptions of legitimacy, fairness, trustworthiness, and support of the institution within the broader bureaucracy and of police bureaucracy, in particular (Flores-Macías and Zarkin Reference Gade and Wilkins2021; Gade and Wilkins Reference Heidensohn2012; Riccucci, Van Ryzin, and Jackson Reference Riccucci, Van Ryzin and Li2018; Riccucci, Van Ryzin, and Lavena Reference Saltzstein2014; Schuck, Baldo, and Powell Reference Shoub, Epp, Baumgartner, Christiani and Roach2021; Theobald and Haider-Markel Reference Wilkins and Williams2009). Comparative policing research in other contexts supports this perspective: citizens in Liberia, Brazil, and Mexico perceive that increasing female police representation makes the police more trustworthy, more respectful of civil liberties, and less corrupt (Còrdova and Kras Reference Còrdova and Kras2020; Flores-Macías and Zarkin Reference Gade and Wilkins2021; Karim Reference Keiser, Wilkins, Meier and Holland2020). Although there may be differences in how women’s representation affects attitudes in the United States and internationally because of varying levels of government legitimacy, capacity, and public interactions with the police, findings that increases in women’s representation improve perceptions of the police are relatively consistent across countries, including in the United States (Barnes, Beaulieu, and Saxton Reference Barnes, Beaulieu and Saxton2018; Riccucci, Van Ryzin, and Lavena Reference Saltzstein2014; Schuck, Baldo, and Powell Reference Shoub, Epp, Baumgartner, Christiani and Roach2021). The positive effect of women’s representation on perceptions of legitimacy appears to be primarily driven by perceptions among men that female police are outsiders within police and political networks, and thus are less likely to abuse their authority, and by perceptions among women that female police have higher risk aversion and as a result are unlikely to be corrupt (Barnes, Beaulieu, and Saxton Reference Barnes, Beaulieu and Saxton2018).

These changing perceptions of police induced by women’s representation may translate into altered behaviors by the public, including an increased willingness to cooperate. Riccucci, Van Ryzin, and Li (Reference Schuck2015) found that women are more willing to cooperate with the government when they encounter female bureaucrats, including taking on more costly behaviors. Similarly, research on racial representation in the bureaucracy finds that parents of students with a same-race teacher are more likely to trust that teacher and invest in co-productive behavior (Holt and Gershenson Reference Huber and Gunderson2019). Other findings suggest that Black police officers increase perceptions of the police’s legitimacy among Black Americans (Cochran and Warren Reference Cochran and Warren2012; Riccucci, Van Ryzin, and Jackson Reference Riccucci, Van Ryzin and Li2018). Improved perceptions of police legitimacy, trustworthiness, effectiveness, and fairness are not only important for the health of democracy but may also increase the public’s willingness to coproduce and cooperate with the police, including reporting crimes of all types.

Although increasing women’s representation in the police may improve perceptions of the police and increase reporting among both women and men, women may be particularly likely to show an increased willingness to engage with the police, especially regarding sexual violence. Theories of representative bureaucracy emphasize that female bureaucrats may only improve outcomes for women if the issue is considered a salient “women’s issue” (Keiser et al. Reference Levy and Mattsson2002). Sexual assault and rape have been politically identified as such because the overwhelming number of victims are women, and the perpetrators are men (Black et al. Reference Black, Basile, Breiding, Smith, Walters, Merrick, Chen and Stevens2011; Keiser et al. Reference Levy and Mattsson2002; Meier and Nicholson-Crotty Reference Mendes, Ringrose and Keller2006). Given social stigmas and taboos surrounding sexual assault, its designation as a “women’s issue,” and shared experiences of women within rape cultures, female victims of sexual assault may believe that female police will be more sympathetic and understanding to their plight and so may feel more comfortable reporting to a female police officer, especially if the perpetrator was male (Keiser et al. Reference Levy and Mattsson2002; Kennedy and Homant Reference Lockwood and Prohaska1983). One female police officer explained that victims prefer to interact with female officers: “If they are the victim and they’ve had a sexual assault…they would rather talk to me” (Rabe-Hemp Reference Riccucci, Van Ryzin and Lavena2017, 130). Indeed, there is some evidence that changing sex demographics in police forces may alter reporting rates of gender-based violence specifically or violent crime more generally (Meier and Nicholson-Crotty Reference Mendes, Ringrose and Keller2006; Miller and Segal Reference Mosher2019; Schuck Reference Shjarback and Todak2018). For example, Schuck (Reference Shjarback and Todak2018) found that increases in women’s representation in the police were associated with increased reporting of rape and that this relationship is moderated by agency structure, including the presence of a union, the provision of resources for victims, and the presence of community policing.

Even though the positive impact of women’s representation on perceptions of police legitimacy and trustworthiness may increase both men’s and women’s willingness to report other gendered and nongendered crimes, we focus here on rape, because its designation as a women’s issue combined with social stigmas surrounding sexual assault may make female victims particularly likely to positively respond to women’s representation in the police. Yet, in the following analysis, we also probe the impact of female police officers on other types of crimes. It is important to note that a victim may not be aware of how many women work in their local police department when they are deciding whether to report. Instead, this mechanism may be more likely to operate when a female officer is the responding officer or when a victim has already decided to go to the police and their report is taken by a female officer whom she believes may ensure that the report is completed.

Some argue that female police officers may be more effective, more likely to prioritize, and more proactive in investigations of rape. Although there is some evidence that female officers behave differently from male officers,Footnote ⁴ it is inconsistent (Brandl, Stroshine, and Frank Reference Brandl, Stroshine and Frank2001; Huber and Gunderson Reference Hyland and Davis2022; Poteyeva and Sun Reference Rabe-Hemp2009). Many of the theories underlying these studies assume that female police will actively represent women’s interests,Footnote ⁵ including those interests of victims of sexual violence. Keiser et al. (Reference Levy and Mattsson2002) outlined the following criteria for determining whether an issue area is gendered and therefore relevant for female bureaucrats: when that issue benefits (or, in this case, harms) women as a class, when the gender of a bureaucrat changes the client–bureaucrat interaction, and when the issue has been defined as a women’s issue through a political process. Rape, thus, could be considered a women’s issue because women are more likely to be exposed to the negative consequences of sexual violence and to be victims of sexual violence (Keiser et al. Reference Levy and Mattsson2002).

However, it is important to note that not all women may identify with or be concerned with “women’s issues.” Female police officers may distance themselves from civilian women, given that careers in the police tend to attract more masculine men and women (Clinkinbeard, Solomon, and Rief Reference Clinkinbeard, Solomon and Rief2020). Therefore, although female officers may seek to improve police responses to rape because of a desire to actively represent women’s interests, this assumption may not hold within the police, a possibility that we explore more later. For example, even though female police officers are more likely to provide support to those involved in domestic violence situations (Stalans and Finn Reference Theobald and Haider-Markel2000; Sun Reference Wentz and Archbold2007), male and female officers hold similar beliefs about sexual assault and domestic violence victims—and female officers may be even more likely to question the credibility of rape victims (Wentz and Archbold Reference Wentz and Archbold2012). Similarly, although some studies find that female officers behave differently from each other in spheres other than gendered crimes, female officers are less likely to do the following: exhibit controlling behavior (Rabe-Hemp Reference Riccucci, Van Ryzin and Jackson2008), use weapons or injure suspects (Hoffman and Hickey Reference Holt and Gershenson2005), initiate traffic stops (Shoub, Stauffer, and Song Reference Stalans and Finn2021), and use force (Ba et al. Reference Ba, Knox, Mummolo and Rivera2021). Yet other studies found that female and male police officers behaved similarly, or when differences were found, they were substantively small (Brandl, Stroshine, and Frank Reference Brandl, Stroshine and Frank2001; Hoffman and Hickey Reference Holt and Gershenson2005; Poteyeva and Sun Reference Rabe-Hemp2009; Rabe-Hemp Reference Riccucci, Van Ryzin and Jackson2008). Thus, it is unclear whether women’s representation in the police changes arrest outcomes or whether female officers are more proactive regarding arrests for rape, in particular.

Although increasing sexual assault arrests may appear to be an ideal way for female bureaucrats to promote policy outcomes that are favorable to women—given that female police officers are street-level bureaucrats with high levels of discretion and that this crime is salient as a women’s issue—the structure, culture, hierarchies, and practices of police forces may limit or dissuade women from actively representing women’s issues (Keiser et al. Reference Levy and Mattsson2002; Meier Reference Meier and Stewart1993). There are several reasons to doubt whether female police officers are able to or choose to have a meaningful impact on policing outcomes. We explore some of these reasons here and note that some (or all) of them may contribute to null effects of gender diversity on a variety of police outcomes.

First, female police officers face immense pressure to integrate into a masculine institutional culture shaped by masculine practices. Police culture privileges behaviors and characteristics commonly associated with masculinity, such as aggression, courage, and competitiveness, while devaluing tasks and characteristics associated with femininity, such as police work related to sexual violence (Brown Reference Brown2007). A masculine police culture increases the likelihood that male (and female) officers will hold negative stereotypes toward women (Lockwood and Prohaska Reference Maltz2015). Police officers’ behavior is directly shaped both by their own beliefs and departmental norms and practices (Johnson Reference Karim, Gilligan, Blair and Beardsley2011). Adherence to traditional gender roles and the privileging of masculinity decreases the perceived seriousness of crimes against women, particularly sexual violence between partners, because the domination of men over women and the presence of violence in relationships are normalized (Lockwood and Prohaska Reference Maltz2015). Police departments with highly masculinized cultures are less likely to allocate the necessary resources and training to ensure the proper handling of gender-based crimes (Belknap Reference Belknap2014; Feder Reference Feder1997; Heidensohn Reference Hoffman and Hickey1992; Loftus Reference Marks2010; Martin Reference Meier1982). Outside of gender-based crimes, female police representation is associated with a decrease in lethal force, but this is attributable to shifts in departmental culture in response to female officers, rather than the presence of these officers alone (Carmichael and Kent Reference Carmichael and Kent2015). In addition, individuals—both male and female—who hold more masculine views are more likely to be interested in policing careers, reinforcing the masculine culture of police (Clinkinbeard, Solomon, and Rief Reference Clinkinbeard, Solomon and Rief2020). Thus, female police officers may themselves hold masculine and traditional gendered views and may have little to no desire to represent women’s interests.

Second, female officers may feel a need to “prove” themselves and their loyalty to the police by not embracing their femininity and women’s interests (Marks Reference Meier2008). For example, one female police officer explained that her success in the police required her to deemphasize her femininity: “I am successful because I don’t play up the ‘female’ part. I’m just one of the guys…. We’re not treated any differently. We’re not babied because that’s one thing I hate. I don’t want to be babied because I am a girl. You know, I just get in there and do what I need to do, just like any of the guys would” (emphasis added; Rabe-Hemp Reference Riccucci, Van Ryzin and Lavena2017, 97). Because female officers are often “tokens” and otherwise have little institutional or cultural support, they are unlikely to radically alter police behavior or to act in a radically different way from their colleagues. Instead, they tend to embrace the dominant occupational identity of the department, feeling pressure to “keep your head down” or turn a blind eye to be accepted by their (male) colleagues (Chan, Devery, and Doran Reference Chan, Devery and Doran2003). This pattern has been demonstrated with racial representation too: Wilkins and Williams (Reference Wilkins and Williams2008) found that the presence of Black officers increased racial profiling. Similarly, Nicholson-Crotty, Nicholson-Crotty, and Fernandez (Reference Poteyeva and Sun2017) found that Black police officers do not decrease police-involved homicides until a critical mass of 35% Black officers is reached, because as a minority group in the police department, Black officers feel pressured to conform to organizational culture.

Finally, even if a female officer wanted to represent women’s interests and improve the police response to rape reports, she may have a limited effect on whether a rape report results in an arrest. This is because arrests are often the product of the decisions of multiple police officers, police leaders (like sergeants and other supervisors), and prosecutors, rather than the outcome of individual actions (Morabito, Williams, and Pattavina Reference Nicholson-Crotty, Nicholson-Crotty and Fernandez2019). As a result, even if a female officer were to want to use her discretion to actively pursue a rape case, the structure and process of pursuing arrests and the many people who may also influence the decision to approve an arrest may dilute her individual impact (Keiser et al. Reference Levy and Mattsson2002). In other words, whereas female officers may have an observable impact with regard to policing outcomes determined by more individual discretion—such as traffic stops (e.g., Shoub, Stauffer, and Song Reference Stalans and Finn2021) or arrests while on patrol and involving the use of force (e.g., Ba et al. Reference Ba, Knox, Mummolo and Rivera2021)—they may be limited in their impact on outcomes that require coordination and cooperation among multiple offices and officials, such as rape arrests: any individual-level differences may not aggregate to the often group-level outcome of arrests. Rank-and-file officers are also limited in their ability to alter the behavior of other police officers. Moreover, female and male officers may not be evenly assigned to tasks and patrols, and thus, female officers may not be present for both the initial report taking and the decision to make an arrest.

In addition, officers’ discretion in sexual assault cases depends on their department’s mission, leadership, resources, and support (Andrews and Johnston Miller Reference Andrews and Miller2013). Police forces tend to be hierarchical; this may limit a female officer’s ability to represent women’s interests because hierarchical organizations tend to depersonalize relationships with outside groups and emphasize adherence with the in-group institutional identity (Keiser et al. Reference Levy and Mattsson2002). Moreover, police often minimize victims’ experiences by creating distinctions between “worthy” and “unworthy” victims based on the type of perpetrator—a stranger versus an acquaintance or partner—and the victims’ life circumstances, appearance, criminal history, or socioeconomic status (Charman and Williams Reference Charman and Williams2021). Police may use their discretion (and may feel institutional pressure) to pursue only those cases where the victim is perceived as “deserving” of justice or where the case is likely to lead to a result and conviction; they may “write off” or “get rid of” cases and, at times, actively pressure victims to drop complaints that are deemed “too messy” or involve an “undeserving” victim. This tendency for police officers to prefer or only pursue rape reports that are deemed “deserving” is exacerbated when departmental leaders or budgets do not prioritize rape and sexual assault crimes, forcing police officers to be highly selective in which cases they pursue (Charman and Williams Reference Charman and Williams2021). Finally, a female police officer’s interest in actively pursuing rape arrests may be dependent on the salience of rape within the community as a women’s interest or issue. Women’s bureaucratic representation only improves outcomes for women if the policy outcome is salient as a women’s issue (Keiser et al. Reference Levy and Mattsson2002). Even though rape and sexual assault are often considered crimes that are highly relevant to women nationally, some communities and some police agencies may not view rape as an important issue in their community. Thus, if rape is neither a salient issue in the community or within the department, female officers may not feel a need or interest to actively pursue rape arrests.

Thus, although there is the potential for female police officers to actively represent women’s interests, which may increase the arrest rate for rape, they may face constraints on their interests, behavior, and priorities. As a result, they may be encouraged to view their relationships with other police officers as superseding their relationship or connection with other women, or they may simply be unable to alter policing outcomes with regard to rape arrests because of the complex, hierarchical nature of rape arrests and policing.

Data and Methods

Although previous studies present suggestive evidence of a relationship between female representation and police outcomes, these findings have several limitations. First, many of these studies either used data from nonrepresentative samples of police agencies, from only one police force or one state, or from only police agencies in major cities (Meier and Nicholson-Crotty Reference Mendes, Ringrose and Keller2006; Saltzstein Reference Schuck1989). Most police departments in the United States serve small areas: in 2016, only 3% of police departments served communities of more than 100,000 people; as mentioned, 71% served communities with less than 10,000 residents (Hyland and Davis Reference Johnson2019). Thus, relying on data from large, urban areas may bias the results by overrepresenting police departments with higher rates of sexual assault and greater demographic diversity. Moreover, some studies used county-level data (e.g., Meier and Nicholson-Crotty Reference Mendes, Ringrose and Keller2006; Miller and Segal Reference Mosher2019), which is not ideal given that individual agencies make arrests. These limited data present a significant obstacle for researchers seeking to study how characteristics of the police affect a variety of policing outcomes.

To overcome these obstacles, we used the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) series, data collected periodically by the federal government from approximately 3,000 law enforcement agencies in each survey year. These agencies are a nationally representative sample, which necessarily changes each survey year,Footnote ⁶ of the approximately 12,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide (see the Supplementary Material for details). LEMAS data have been used in criminology (e.g., Schuck Reference Schuck, Baldo and Powell2014; Reference Shjarback and Todak2018, Shjarback and Todak Reference Shoub, Stauffer and Song2019) though less often in political science (though, see Huber and Gunderson Reference Hyland and Davis2022). To our knowledge, we are the first to link the LEMAS data from the 1980s to the present, merging the data by unique agency identifiers and connecting it to crime records for all years in the series, despite the difficulties in doing so. Thus, this article provides the first test of the effect of female representation on policing outcomes using all available LEMAS data (1987, 1990, 1993, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2007, 2013, and 2016), comprising approximately 23,000 observations and more than 10,000 unique agencies. Because agencies may be included in some sample years and not others, our analysis cannot make within-agency comparisons over time and instead emphasizes broad observational patterns across agencies.Footnote ⁷ Importantly, these results reflect aggregate patterns across agencies, rather than decisions made by individual police officers. Thus, we cannot make conclusions about the behavior of individual female and male officers but only whether women’s representation within agencies alters policing outcomes of the police force. However, as a robustness check, we also examine individual-level data on arrest rates using data from Ba et al. (Reference Ba, Knox, Mummolo and Rivera2021).

Our independent variable is the percentage of each agency’s sworn, full-time workforce that is female. Sworn employees carry firearms, have arrest powers, and possess badges. This variable therefore defines the percentage of female police officers, and not clerks or other positions without arrest powers. Figure 1 shows the variable’s distribution over time. The data exhibit significant variation, though the average percentage of female officers is relatively consistent and does not increase significantly over time. This reflects the stagnant growth in women’s representation at the national level over the past 50 years.

Figure 1 Percent female sworn officers, 1987–2016. Source: Data from LEMAS.

To estimate the relationship between the percent of female police officers and the rape arrest and report rate, we estimate an ordinary least squares model using Equation 1:

(1) $$ {Y}_{i,t}\hskip0.35em =\hskip0.35em {\alpha}_1+{\beta}_1{\left(\%\hskip0.35em Female\ Officers\right)}_{i,t}+{X}_{i,t}+{\delta}_t+{\in}_{i,t} $$

Our main coefficient of interest is β ₁, the percent of sworn officers that are female. Y_i,t refers to two dependent variables, the first of which is the rateFootnote ⁸ of rape reports in agency i in year t. This variable is the rate of reported rapes per 100,000 jurisdiction population, because some jurisdictions are significantly larger than others, and thus the raw number has significant skew. The second dependent variable is the rape arrest rate in agency i in year t. This variable represents the rate of rape arrests per 100,000 population in the jurisdiction. Both variables come from the Uniform Crime Reporting Program at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has known problems, including incomplete reporting from agencies (Maltz Reference Martin2006). We therefore include only those agencies that reported annual arrest and crime data to the FBI.

X_i,t is a matrix of control variables that may influence the efficiency of the police department, rape reports and arrests, and women’s representation.Footnote ⁹ We control for the number of agency employees because well-staffed departments are more likely to receive complaints, arrest more perpetrators, and have female officers. We control for the percent of full-time sworn officers who are Black to measure the demographic diversity of the police force and as a proxy for the diversity within the community more broadly.Footnote ¹⁰ We also include a binary indicator for whether the agency is a county sheriff’s office because of the unique electoral pressures that sheriffs face (Farris and Holman Reference Farris and Holman2015) that may lead these agencies to act differently with regard to rape reports and arrests and to make different hiring decisions. Approximately one-quarter of the agencies in the data are county sheriff’s offices. Additionally, in the specification with the arrest rate dependent variable, we control for the agency rape report rate. In some models we additionally control for agency budget to measure resources that may contribute to an increase in investigations of rape reports and whether the agency has a community policing component in its mission statement because women are more likely to join these departments.Footnote ¹¹ These latter two variables are only available for certain years, so we include them in only some specifications.

Finally, δ_t represents year-fixed effects for each year of the LEMAS data (see the Supplementary Material for alternate fixed effects).Footnote ¹² We do not include agency-fixed effectsFootnote ¹³ because more than half the sample are agencies surveyed only once. We are limited by the availability of agency- and city-level covariates so we only have a few control variables. Ideally, we would include a measure of institutional culture and specialized training or units on rape, but inconsistent or absent data from LEMAS make that impossible. Future studies should explore these factors to directly test the impact of institutional culture, training, and resources.

Table 1 shows the summary statistics for variables used in the analyses. Of note is the maximum value of the percent of female officers: 28 agency-years record the percent of female officers as 100%. Most of these agencies have only one or two employees who happen to be women. We include them in the main analysis, although the results do not change if we exclude them. On average, agencies comprise about 8% women (about 18 women per agency) and make about 9 arrests for rape per 100,000 jurisdiction population—although they receive about 29 reports of rape for that same population size: this is a significant difference between the number of rapes reported and the number that result in legal action for the victims.

Table 1 Gender Composition and Crime Data of US Police Forces, 1987–2016

Table 2 estimates Equation 1. Columns 1 and 2 estimate only the relationship between the percent of female police officers and the rape report rate and rape arrest rate, respectively; Columns 3 and 4 add a series of control variables across the years 1987–2016; and columns 5 and 6 add controls that limit the analysis to post-1997. We estimate columns 3 and 4, and 5 and 6 separately, because we are concerned that those missing control variables that limit our sample size could skew the representativeness of our sample; we are cautious about drawing firm conclusions on the basis of including those covariates only.

Table 2 The Effect of Female Police on Rape Report and Arrest Rates, 1987–2016

* p < .1; **p < .05; ***p < .01.

Note: Year dummy variables included.

In Columns 1 and 2, the percent of female officers is positively and significantly correlated with both the rape arrest rate and the rape report rate. Once we add control variables, however, some of those magnitudes change. For instance, column 4 indicates a negative correlation between female officers and rape arrest rates, although this does not reach statistical significance with the inclusion of additional control variables in column 6. This finding suggests both the importance of controlling for these confounding factors and the potentially counterintuitive effect of female officers on rape arrests. Column 4 shows a negative correlation between female officers and rape arrest rates, but that significance disappears once we include a wider set of control variables in column 6. This null effect is consistent with our expectations of a null effect of female police officers on rape arrest rates. Yet, columns 3 and 5 show that one potential impact of increasing female representation is indeed higher rates of rape reports. This suggests that rape victims may be more likely to report their assaults to female officers (e.g., Meier and Nicholson-Crotty Reference Mendes, Ringrose and Keller2006; Miller and Segal Reference Mosher2019; Schuck Reference Shjarback and Todak2018), with no (or a negative) commensurate increase in the actual arrests for those crimes. This represents a significant and troubling justice gap for victims of rape.

Figure 2 illustrates the patterns from table 2 with a regression line showing the relationship between percent female officers and the rape arrest and report rates. There appears to be a slightly positive association between female officers and the rape report rate and a fairly flat though overall negative relationship between female officers and the rape arrest rate. This graph may point to a potential nonparametric relationship between female officers and rape arrest and report rates; that is, the association between female police and arrest and report rates may switch signs as the percent of female police grows. We explore this possibility in the Supplementary Material and find some evidence for this phenomenon.

Figure 2 Scatterplot of percent female officers and the rape report and arrest rates. Source: Data from LEMAS.

The control variables in table 2 are largely significant and as we predicted: the number of employees (in column 3), the rape report rate, and sheriff’s offices are associated with higher arrest rates. Interestingly, the percent of Black officers is associated with higher rates of both rape reports and arrests. This correlation could be an indication that multiple forms of diversity—based on both gender and race—and improved descriptive representation may increase reporting and arrest rates. There appears to be no significant effect of community policing on arrests, but there is some evidence that it increases the rape report rate.

To see whether the relationships in table 2 are unique to the crime of rape, we consider the effect of female police officers on the rate of reports and arrests for violent crime—murder, assault, robbery, and rape—as defined by the FBI. Table 3 uses these dependent variables and finds little evidence that female representation in the police is associated with increased arrest rates for violent crimes, consistent with our findings regarding rape. We also find inconsistent evidence that female police are associated with increases in report rates for violent crimes. Although the specification is significant in columns 1 and 3, once we add additional control variables, the coefficient is no longer significant (whereas it stays significant and positive in table 2). We attribute at least part of the significance of violent crime reporting and arrest rates in columns 1 and 3 to the fact that rapes are included in our calculation of violent crimes, following the typical FBI calculation of this variable.Footnote ¹⁴ An additional specification with property crimes is in the Supplementary Material and is similarly insignificant once we add control variables. We take this as evidence that this positive relationship between female police officers and report rates is unique to the crime of rape; that is, a justice gap exists among victims of gendered crimes that does not seem to exist among victims of other types of violent or property crimes.

Table 3 The Effect of Female Police on Violent Crime (VC) Report and Arrest Rates, 1987–2016

* p < .1; **p < .05; ***p < .01.

Note: Year dummy variables are included.

We estimate several robustness checks in the Supplementary Material, including a matched analysis; nonparametric (i.e., squared) measures of female representation; subsets by year and agency type; county- or state- or agency-fixed effects to account for heterogeneity in police agencies and police responses to rape across counties, states, and agencies; and clustered errors, all of which are fairly robust.Footnote ¹⁵ Our main findings on the positive and significant association between female police and the rate of reported rapes remain, though we do find some evidence of a nonparametric effect as well.

We also replicate the results found by Ba et al. (Reference Ba, Knox, Mummolo and Rivera2021) and subset their arrest data to sex crimes arrests only. Briefly, Ba et al. (Reference Ba, Knox, Mummolo and Rivera2021) used data on daily patrol assignments from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to compare how officers of different demographic profiles behave while on the job. One of their findings is that female officers make fewer arrests than their male counterparts. We use their data and code to replicate their results with one key difference: we limit arrests to only sex crimes to analyze how female officers behave with regard to arrests for these crimes.Footnote ¹⁶ This replication and extension provide supplemental support for our main results. Our research uses aggregate data from police departments, whereas Ba et al. (Reference Ba, Knox, Mummolo and Rivera2021) used individual-level data, and yet we find similar outcomes; female officers are not significantly associated with substantive increases in arrests for sex crimes. This suggestive evidence supports our main findings and highlights that those results are consistent across different contexts.Footnote ¹⁷

Taken together, the robustness checks provide additional evidence of our main findings and indeed point to a troubling justice gap: female police officers may increase the rape report rate with no commensurate increase in rape arrest rates. This provides suggestive evidence that increasing women’s representation within police forces may improve the public’s and particularly rape victims’ perception of the police and may make victims more willing to report the crime. This supports previous findings that women’s participation in police forces and other institutions improves perceptions of legitimacy and trust and increases cooperation by the public with institutional agents (Barnes, Beaulieu, and Saxton Reference Barnes, Beaulieu and Saxton2018; Flores-Macías and Zarkin Reference Gade and Wilkins2021; Karim Reference Keiser, Wilkins, Meier and Holland2020; Riccucci, Van Ryzin, and Lavena Reference Saltzstein2014). However, female police alone may not be able to substantively affect the arrest rate. We do not take this as evidence that female police officers are not doing their job or that they have no impact on policing outcomes more generally, but rather that there may be larger institutional and organizational barriers to secure justice for rape victims. Individual officers are limited by departmental culture, norms, training, and practices, as well as legal, political, and budgetary factors beyond their immediate control. Moreover, female officers may face pressure to “fit in” as “one of the guys,” may face discrimination and tokenism, and may simply not identify with or desire to represent women’s interests within the police. Moreover, some scholars argue that to change police behavior, it is important to recruit men who respect women as equals and discuss gender stereotyping during police training (Belknap (Reference Belknap2014). Additionally, even if female officers wished to actively pursue a rape case, the process of taking a case from initial report to arrest often involves other police officers, legal representatives, and political offices, which may dilute the effect of female officers. Similarly, female and male officers may be assigned to different duties and patrols, which may limit female officers’ impact on arrest decisions. Although this analysis cannot directly uncover why female police officers are not associated with increased arrest rates due to the daunting, if not impossible, task of measuring the culture of police departments and the complex and varied process of arrests across departments, the results highlight that simply adding women to the police force does not immediately translate into improvements for victims of rape; the findings also underscore the need for more careful analysis not only of descriptive diversity within police forces but also of institutional cultures, training, professionalization, arrest procedures, and norms.