Justice Provocateur: Jane Tennison and Policing in Prime Suspect

2. Prime Suspect and Women in Policing

chapter 2 Prime Suspect and Women in Policing To a large extent, the early absence of women police protagonists from novels and television programs was an accurate reflection of social reality. As we discussed in the Introduction, women were largely excluded from the majority of police patrol and crime investigation jobs until the 1970s. Despite their integration into a wider range of police duties, women continued to struggle to remain and advance in their positions and often were relegated to police work that was behind the scenes of street patrol and investigation. Such jobs were hardly the “stuff” of crime fiction. We begin this chapter with a discussion of the experiences of real-world women working in policing after the 1970s integration period. Then we elaborate the ways in which Prime Suspect 1 brought the feminist genre to the television police procedural form, a subgenre that has been especially resistant to women in lead roles. In the final section of this chapter, we reflect on how the portrayal of women police officers in the Prime Suspect series comports with the lived experiences of actual policewomen, in particular, those who occupy high ranks in police organizations. Real-World Experiences of Women in Policing after 1970s Integration When police departments began to assign women to a full range of police duties, an overt, extensive, and continuing opposition to policewomen occurred at all levels in the UK, the United States, and numerous other countries (Brown and Heidensohn 2000; Martin and Jurik 2007). This Cav_Jur RevPgs.indd 37 5/18/12 3:41 PM resistance often flew in the face of official departmental policies of equal opportunity. The integration policies also effectively ended specialized women’s divisions begun in the early twentieth century. Ironically, the disestablishment of special women’s divisions dramatically reduced the numbers and percentages of women who occupied highly ranked police positions in the years immediately following integration (Brown 1998). Research has documented both the advancements of and barriers faced by women police officers in the 1980s through the 1990s (Martin 1980; Morash and Greene 1986; Hunt 1990; Brown and Fielding 1993; Brown 1998; Brown and Heidensohn 2000; Jurik and Martin 2001). Women’s duties and numbers have slowly expanded in UK and US police departments since the 1970s, and women now comprise about 15 percent of sworn police personnel (Brown and Heidensohn 2000; Martin and Jurik 2007). Policewomen have faced barriers to parity with policemen at the interpersonal, organizational, and societal levels. As numerical tokens (15 percent or less), women officers’ visibility was heightened (Kanter 1977; Brown and Heidensohn 2000). This visibility, combined with negative expectations about women’s policing abilities, subjected them to greater scrutiny than men. To be viewed as minimally competent, women had to exceed normal work expectations. Yet highly competent women threatened male coworkers and the solidarity of the all-male work group. As outsiders, women undermined the historical links between good police work and masculine prowess (Smith and Gray 1985; Brown 2007). To the extent that police work and masculine identity were intertwined, women’s success in policing was a challenge to policemen’s sense of self (Martin 1980). Moreover, visions of women as symbolic keepers of moral virtue threatened policemen who participated in or knew of corrupt police practices (Hunt 1990). Initially, policewomen were isolated through a variety of behaviors, including inattention, ridicule, and outright hostility. Male citizens often demonstrated resistance to women officers through subtle nonverbal cues as well as verbal insults and, less frequently, physical assaults (Martin 1980). Policemen stereotyped women officers as either little sister/dependent types, motherly types, promiscuous whore types, or stern iron maiden types (Martin 1980). A unifying feature of much of policemen’s resistance was the sexualization of women in the workplace. Women’s sexual orientation and marital status were the subject of scrutiny. Suspected or actual 38 chapter 2 Cav_Jur RevPgs.indd 38 5/18/12 3:41 PM lesbian officers faced severe opposition in an organization that strongly emphasizes heterosexual masculine dominance over heterosexual women (Miller, Forest, and Jurik 2004). Women were excluded from after-work socializing. This exclusion disadvantaged women by denying them camaraderie and the informal information needed to excel at work. Women were also excluded from the sponsorship necessary for advancement in highly competitive police organizations (Jurik and Martin 2001). These barriers were commonly faced by women in other traditionally male occupations, including correctional security work, mining, firefighting, and the...