UCL School of Management is delighted to welcome Professor Jennifer Merluzzi,to host a research seminar discussing ‘Protecting the Masculine Occupation: Officer Behavioral Response to More Women in Law Enforcement’

Abstract

Diversity initiatives aimed at increasing women’s representation in male-dominated occupations have met mixed success. Although support from incumbents – employees already working in an occupation – is vital for diversity initiatives to succeed, less attention has focused on how incumbents respond to women’s increased presence. We propose that in response to diversification, incumbent employees will amplify stereotypically masculine behaviors, such as aggression and dominance, to protect the occupation’s gendered identity and boundaries. However, we posit that increasing women’s representation in management could attenuate this response. We investigate these predictions in the context of law enforcement, using over 1 million monthly observations spanning 12 years for approximately 13,000 men and women frontline officers in the Chicago Police Department. We find that an increased proportion of women officers in a police unit is positively associated with a man—but not a woman— incumbent officer’s individual propensity for a use-of-force incident in a given month. This behavioral response is attenuated when women hold a larger share of direct supervisory and upper management positions in the unit, offering a viable policy intervention. Supplemental analyses replicate this pattern while ruling out alternative explanations of gendered task segregation (i.e., men officers assume physical tasks out of safety concerns for women officers) or changes in citizen interactions with police when more women officers are present. By considering the behavioral responses of incumbent employees, our study sheds light on how well-intentioned diversity initiatives can unintentionally reinforce the barriers they aim to dismantle