Study shows biases undermine diversity efforts in policing

As more organizations attempt to increase the representation of women in traditionally male-dominated occupations (such as engineering, technology or banking), new research from George Washington University professor Jennifer Merluzzi indicates that simply hiring more women into these fields may not make diversity efforts more effective.

The study, published in American Sociological Review (April 2024), "A Hidden Barrier to Diversification? Performance Recognition Penalties for Incumbent Workers in Male-Dominated Occupations," looked at the impact of increasing gender representation within the traditionally male-dominated occupation of law enforcement.

Merluzzi and her co-author Jirs Meuris, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, examined publicly available data spanning 13 years on nearly 14,000 officers working in the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Their findings revealed a performance recognition penalty for men and women workers from the process of occupational diversification itself.

Since the study used data that spanned multiple years and looked at the officer's individual likelihood of recognition, the findings documented the difference in performance recognition each individual officer received as the number of women in his or her policing unit changed over time.

Women entered the units both as new recruits from the police academy, but also as men and women transferred into and out of different work units across time and thus represented the regular fluctuations of workers typical of an effort to diversify a highly gendered occupation.

"There are hundreds of people in a work unit and what this shows is when the number of women you're working with is higher this month than last month, your likelihood of receiving performance recognition goes down," Merluzzi said. "But you are the same worker doing the same tasks in the same job—the only thing changing is the number of women working alongside you that month in your police unit."

Merluzzi noted that the percentage of women in the CPD remained fairly consistent throughout the timeframe they studied, but that even small fluctuations in the number of women in one's surrounding work unit negatively impacted that individual worker's chance of performance recognition.

Both men and women employees were impacted by this performance recognition penalty, but since women had a lower baseline likelihood of receiving a performance recognition, the impact of this penalty on women was even more substantial.

The study also found both men and women supervisors were both likely to display this bias, although they found that men supervisors were more likely to penalize men officers than women officers for their association with women peers in their unit, while women supervisors equally penalized men and women officers for this.

Merluzzi said they also considered alternative explanations for their results such as women officers being sorted into some units over others or that the tasks the officers were being asked to do changed as they worked with more women officers in a way that reduced the chance of performance recognition.