Actually, it was kind of fun when you’d go to a bar fight and you’d get going with the cowboys and they’d come out swinging and they’d see that you were a girl … They’d never want to admit that you were the one to pull them off somebody or took them down in a fight because that would be very destructive to their egos.
—Pam Osborne
RCMP Officer
*
The challenges that the RCMP faced over deciding how to train and dress the first female Mounties were soon overshadowed by other concerns following Troop 17’s graduation. Larger questions surfaced about the reception the women might receive at their first detachments. How would rank-and-file Mounties react to the women at their first postings? Would members of the public respect female Mounties as figures of civic authority? Could women meet the physical demands of law enforcement? Would male police officers be placed in danger as a result of women’s physical limitations? Were women capable of providing backup during violence? Would they be able to exercise their powers of arrest with sufficient physical force?
These questions were based on assumptions about gender. Police departments across North America were governed by a culture of masculinity where rigidly defined notions of gender and police authority dominated, and where authority was often understood as the ability to deliver lethal force.[419] Authority was also understood in terms of mental discipline, physical toughness, and aggression, all characterized by a strong and imposing body that communicated the potential for the use of force. For much of the twentieth century, these ideas undergirded the organizational structure of the RCMP where hierarchical rank structures, the chain of command, control over the rank and file, and the RCMP’s connection to national identity all coalesced to reinforce police work as a masculine undertaking.
The myth that police officers had to be burly, tall, and strong to combat violence was often cited as the central reason for barring women from the occupation. The idea that male physical prowess was necessary to be an effective police officer was pervasive by the early decades of the twentieth century. It was no coincidence that the idea coincided with women’s entrance into law enforcement. Although the Vancouver city police department was the first to hire women as police officers in Canada in 1912, just one decade later their positions were being eliminated and their powers eroded. In 1919, Vancouver employed four women with full police powers and one matron working in the jail. By 1928, however, just two female constables and three police matrons, all “without police authority,” were employed by the department. Commanding officers justified the removal of police powers from female officers because “women have not proved themselves as responsive to discipline as men.” Women were also deemed unable to meet the physical demands of police work. Police duty was “a matter of strong-arm methods and … women’s arms are weaker than those of their brothers,” making them unlikely representatives of civic authority.[420]
The idea that physical prowess was a necessity for police work became firmly entrenched in police culture as the century wore on, evidenced by the height standards most departments adopted. By 1974, the minimum height requirement for applicants to Canadian municipal departments was set at five feet ten. It was a standard that few women, or for that matter men, could meet. The RCMP was no different and most Mounties viewed their strength and height as their most effective weapon on the street because it intimidated others and ensured compliance from the public.[421] They belonged to a club of elite masculinity where their youth, race, size, and strength idealized them as superior to other men who were under their authority. The image of the RCMP was built around this concept, linking the size and race of the male police body to representations of Canada. It is not surprising that when the RCMP lowered its minimum height requirements for recruits to five feet eight for men and five feet four for women in 1974, it was controversial.
Not all Canadian police departments were eager to follow the RCMP by lowering their height standards. In 1979, the Ottawa police department refused the application of a woman for the position of constable because she did not meet the minimum physical requirements of being five feet ten and 160 pounds.[422] The applicant took her case to the Ontario Human Rights Commission where a Board of Inquiry ruled the “police height and weight requirements as discriminatory in effect against women,”[423] forcing the police department to modify their physical testing standards.[424] That same year, the board also adjudicated a complaint that height and weight standards at the police department in Toronto were discriminatory against men because women were not required to meet the same criteria. The commission found that “separate height and weight requirements for women applicants to the police force were not discriminatory because they were not prejudicial to men.”[425] The commission’s ruling signalled that physical differences could no longer be a justification for inequality, at least not in the province of Ontario.
Police departments in other jurisdictions continued to impose height and weight restrictions on applicants. By 1982, just six of twenty-four Canadian police departments had no height or weight restrictions, and one, the Halifax police department, set a standard height of five feet eight for both men and women.[426] These regulations continued to be challenged in courts across the country well into the 1990s as a number of communities sought to make their police departments more representative of the general population. By 1986, some police departments developed new physical testing standards when the new federal Employment Equity Act (EEA) came into effect. The Act called for the mandatory development of an employment equity program for all “federally regulated workplaces” and required federal employers to “set up proactive initiatives to promote equality for four designated groups: women, Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities, and members of visible minorities.”[427] As a result, four Canadian municipal departments developed new standards that included weight drag, flexibility, obstacle runs, victim recovery, hand strength, and other tests designed to measure the minimum strength and agility of an applicant.[428] By 1988, the RCMP had modified its physical testing system by adapting some aspects of the standards already being used by municipal departments.[429]
But testing during the application process and the realities of violence on the streets were two different things in the minds of many male police officers. Contrary to assumptions about women in policing, however, female police officers were not above resorting to physical confrontation when necessary. Marlene Watson, who joined the Toronto police department in 1964, received a number of physical injuries as a result of violent conflicts with members of the public during her long career as a police officer. In an interview with the Toronto Star on the occasion of her retirement, Watson commented, “I’ve been punched. I’ve had whiplash from kicks to the head. When you first join, you have a false sense of security. You think they won’t hit you because you’re a woman.” She also had her tailbone broken three times.[430] Watson’s assumption that she would not be assaulted because she was a woman reveals that, at least initially, she also relied on conventional understandings of gender to enforce the law.
Female Mounties were also not afraid of using physical force. Some, like Margaret Watson, “gained a sense of satisfaction in subduing a man.”[431] Several women used their prior interest in physical fitness and sport to their advantage while engaged in police work. Leslie Clark’s interest in martial arts had started before she joined the RCMP and continued after she was hired. At the time she was interviewed for this study, Clark held degrees in four disciplines: a second-degree black belt in jujitsu, a first-degree black belt in karate, a brown belt in judo, and a red belt in tae kwan do. Her martial arts qualifications gave her confidence in terms of fighting while carrying out general policing duties. “Fighting for me was never an issue. I’ve been hit, I’d hit, you know, I’m not scared of it … I’m not scared of fighting in the general sense or in being physical,” stated Clark.[432] She was clearly at an advantage when it came to physical confrontations with members of the public.
Like Clark’s, Janice Murdoch’s level of physical fitness challenged perceptions about the limitations of the female police body. As a dog handler for the RCMP, Murdoch was required to maintain a certain level of physical fitness that few men or women possess. She described the importance of remaining in good physical condition as a dog handler:
Dog handlers in general have a lot of injuries relating to their cores because our job is very unnatural in that you have this eighty pound dog pulling you off centre all the time. So, instead of it being just a run where your body is straight and in control, you’re actually fighting the dog all the time. So you’re pulling back always on one side more than the other. You’re going over fences, and through trees, and losing your balance a lot. Dog handlers have a lot of back injuries because if your core’s weak, your back is going to be injured. [They also have a lot of] knee injuries and ankle injuries. So I do a lot of exercises to combat that. I weight train at least once a week, I run probably three times a week, and then I swim and I bike. I ski a lot in the winter.[433]
Murdoch was also aware that as she aged, many of the suspects that she would be pursuing would be younger than she was, a development she considered incentive enough to stay in top physical condition.
Despite the physical capabilities of women like Murdoch, the concept of male physical prowess as the ideal standard continued within police culture. The RCMP’s own studies on female Mounties discussed how perceptions of feminine weakness shadowed the careers of many of the women. According to one study conducted in 1984, male recruits at Depot “were concerned about females’ (lower) physical strength,” an assumption that marginalized women as a “minority who have to prove themselves” even before they left the academy.[434] The study’s conclusions suggested that male recruits held specific beliefs about women as the weaker sex even prior to their hiring. Since police agencies recruited from the local community, the attitudes and beliefs of male recruits were a reflection of understandings about women in operation in broader Canadian society at the time.[435]
The myth of the physical limitations of female Mounties was subsequently reproduced in the field. In 1986, an RCMP study of female constables found that a woman’s inability to handle violence or physical confrontation was often presumed by male respondents. This perception emerged time and again in the comments made by male police officers who were participating in the study. Women were singled out as requiring additional physical training to compensate for what was seen as their inherent physical weakness. Women were also described as unreliable and ineffective. One male constable responded that male members were constantly having to cover for the female members and could not rely on them in emergency situations. Another maintained that female Mounties needed more backup at violence-related complaints no matter how many years of service they had.[436] It was obvious that many men in the RCMP perceived all women, not just some, as ineffective as police officers based on ideas about their physical limitations.
Gendered attitudes emerged again in the same study in response to a question regarding the reasons female Mounties were experiencing difficulties adapting to police work. An overwhelming majority of male constables and their supervisors considered that, because of “physical inferiority and [the] sensitive nature of females, adaptation is hardest [to the] violent and physical aspects of police work.”[437] One male constable clarified his response in this way: “Females do not have the physical size/strength to take part in violence, and as a result are apprehensive in attending situations where they may encounter any violence.” Another explained that “females face an internal conflict between their natural femininity and the masculine role of police work.”[438] These comments reveal how male RCMP officers associated specific characteristics with femininity, which they described as “natural” and therefore unchangeable. In contrast, police work was viewed as a “masculine role.” Most male Mounties saw women as socialized to be accommodating rather than aggressive, and as emotional rather than rational beings. It was an attitude that left little room for alternative approaches to law enforcement.
Although male police officers advanced the idea that physical prowess was an absolute necessity in enforcing the law, researchers studying the issue took exception to this viewpoint. One 1982 study of American police departments examined “the issue of the physical capability of women police”—and refuted “the commonly expressed myth that policing is essentially male work because only men have the physical strength needed to perform patrol.”[439] The study’s author evaluated data acquired from eight American police departments in the 1970s to determine whether claims of the physical limitations of female police officers were valid. He concluded that “women perform the patrol function in municipal, county, and state police settings as ably as men, and that it is feasible to hire and deploy women as officers the same as men.”[440] His findings indicated that perceptions about the physical inadequacies of women were unfounded.
The idea that police officers were obliged to engage in a constant stream of violence requiring the continuous use of physical force was also a misconception according to criminologist Daniel Bell, who found in 1969 that “approximately 90 percent of a police officer’s time was spent in noncriminal service activities.”[441] In a 1993 study, another researcher found that just 15 percent of police calls involved violent intervention, most of which could be diffused if an officer had the ability to “talk to people.”[442] By 2003, researchers studying the types of calls police officers responded to uncovered what they dubbed the “80-20 secret” of police work: “This secret is that 80% of a police officer’s time is spent doing social-work-type jobs, such as domestic disturbances/violence, disturbances of the peace, and traffic control … [while] 20% of the time is spent fighting crime, such as homicide, narcotics, kidnapping, and armed robbery.” However, most recruits graduating from police academies believed the opposite was true, that 80 percent of their time would be spent fighting violent crime.[443] This is not surprising, given that the curriculum being taught in many police academies in the 1970s and 1980s placed a heavy emphasis on the management of violence but afforded minimal amounts of time to developing skills such as resolving interpersonal disputes.[444] The academy was also a place where instructors routinely told their war stories, reinforcing for recruits that physical force was not only a necessity but a measure of success and prestige.
Interpreting whether a situation required an aggressive physical response or conflict resolution was a skillset that women, and some men, brought to the occupation. All of the female police officers who were interviewed for this research relied on negotiation rather than physical confrontation on a regular basis. RCMP constable Kate Morton recalled that she did not like engaging in physical fights. She found that if there was a way of “talking some guy into the back of the car, it was easier.”[445] Similarly, Carolyn Harper discovered that her best weapons were her gender and her ability to talk her way out of dangerous situations. “If the person was male and they still had some faculties about them when a female officer arrived, they would try not to look like a fool. They would try to pull themselves together” when negotiating with her.[446]
A woman’s ability to negotiate was cited by female Mounties as the central difference between the ways male and female RCMP officers approached their work. One anonymous female survey respondent stated, “There is a place for a female in any police role, both operational and administrative. You don’t have to be a fighter to be a good GD police person.” She cited an ability to talk your way through difficulties as essential in police work for both men and women.[447] Allison Palmer concurred, explaining:
I would talk my way out of situations because, I mean, I’m tall but I’m small-boned. I don’t have a lot of strength. I have seen female members who have … tried to be one of the guys [during confrontations] and things escalated. So, I mean, there are women who wanted to act just like the men and there are those of us who knew we couldn’t perform that way, so we had to use much more of a psychological approach rather than physical.[448]
Palmer, who was never assaulted on the job during twenty years of patrol work, recalled that she did have to get physical a number of times. She remembered that very few men would engage with her during a physical altercation unless they were too drunk to notice that they were dealing with a female police officer. Most of the time, Palmer relied on her negotiation skills to resolve tough situations and make an arrest. “When you think about it, we want to do the same job [as male officers], but you’re just going to take a little different tactic to get there.”[449] The alternative approaches female Mounties like Palmer employed challenged the idea that physical prowess was an absolute necessity.
When Shelly Evans was asked about differences between male and female approaches to law enforcement, she responded, “The boys still see it as the pursuits, the fighting, breaking heads, you know. There’s always the helping people in the background [of their minds], but boys are still boys, you know. I think women [join the RCMP] to help people.”[450] Carol Franklin also talked her way out of a number of difficult situations. “I would be able to talk, to use that skillset. Does it always work? Of course not … [But] you don’t need to resolve issues [with force and] you don’t need to get into a confrontation to be effective,” said Franklin.[451] Marianne Robson, whose first posting was to a mining community, found that dealing with the public was extremely physical. Still, she relied on negotiation as much as possible. “Because I was a woman, I knew I had to use the strongest muscle I had and that was my tongue. So that [physical] aggressiveness of police officers … I wasn’t able to do that. So I treated community people the way I wanted to be treated,” recalled Robson.[452]
It was a sound approach that members of the community usually respected. When Allison Palmer served a summons to a man at his house one day, she did not realize until afterwards that he was a “police hater” and extremely violent. When he was arrested one month later for attempted murder, the suspect refused to talk to male police officers at the detachment. He wanted to talk to Palmer. Palmer got the man to make a statement, for which he thanked her at the end of their interview. Her male colleagues wanted to know how she did it. Citing her counselling background and knowledge of violent behaviour, Palmer insisted that she viewed the situation as a challenge. “I guess that’s part of why I liked detachment work. That was my challenge, even though I knew people were going to get hurt and end up serving time. I was helping protect somebody else from harm.”[453] Palmer’s preventative approach to a potentially violent situation achieved positive results.
Female Mounties’ preference for preventive rather than punitive approaches to police work was most evident in arrest statistics. In fact, in research undertaken for the RCMP’s Health Services Directorate in 1996, Dr. Lynn Andrews suggested that the criteria used in the RCMP’s annual performance evaluations might be inappropriate for women. While high arrest rates traditionally signalled good performance for men, women’s preference for de-escalating violence often resulted in lower arrest rates, suggesting that a different measure of performance might be needed.[454] In the United States, lower arrest rates in the 1970s were usually touted as proof that women were incapable of effectively enforcing the law. Although women “required arrest assistance more often than men,” they also made fewer arrests because of their policing style, according to one researcher. However, in Washington, DC, women not only made fewer arrests but they also “sustained a higher conviction rate making it likely that they made fewer unnecessary arrests or higher quality ones.”[455] Lower arrest rates for women did not necessarily point to their ineffectiveness as police officers.
The possibility of imminent death was another reason that ideas about the importance of physical size persisted in police culture. The potential for death during the course of a shift, as well as the mandate to kill fellow citizens if necessary, united police officers across all jurisdictions.[456] It was also a factor that distinguished policing from most other occupations.[457] While occupations such as the forest or mining industries had the potential to endanger workers’ lives, the police role was unusual in that it required officers to face the threat of sudden attack from another person, not the more calculable risks of physical or environmental hazards.[458] Yet according to Statistics Canada, 133 police officers (92 percent) who were murdered in Canada between 1961 and 2009 were killed with a firearm, suggesting that physical size was not a factor in preventing death.[459] Still, physical prowess remained an essential element for effective law enforcement within police culture. Negotiation was a skill that was not given the same priority as physical force in the RCMP, an indication that a hierarchy of skillsets was at work within the organization.
*
The image of the physically imposing male crime fighter was so normalized that by the time of the arrival of the first female Mounties in 1974, few Canadians, inside or outside the RCMP, could understand how women could do the job. Ideas about the necessity of physical size and strength left little room for the alternative approaches women brought to policing. Although female Mounties could meet physical confrontation and violence with force when called upon to do so, many used negotiation instead to achieve more peaceful outcomes. Their alternative responses destabilized the idea that effective policing required physical size and strength, establishing a new standard that allowed female Mounties to define police work on their own terms. Nevertheless, masculinity remained the standard that women were expected to live up to and emulate, no matter what. Acceptance of the alternatives would be slow in coming. It was one more hurdle that the women of the RCMP would have to overcome.