The recruitment of women and visible minorities into Canadian police forces: Should we expect further progress?
| Author | Stephen B Perrott |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X211032106 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
2023, Vol. 96(1) 26–44
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0032258X211032106
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The recruitment of women
and visible minorities into
Canadian police forces: Should
we expect further progress?
Stephen B Perrott
Department of Psychology, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, NS, Canada
Abstract
The recruitment of women and minority group members was intended to move Canadian
police forces towards societal representation and to enhance services provided to, and
improve relations with, women and racially marginalized groups. This review contem-
plates progress towards these goals at a time of extraordinary public dissatisfaction with
Western policing. A rationale is offered for reconsidering the 50% representation target
for women and it is emphasized just how little we yet know about racial bias in policing.
The review ends with a call for rigorous, apolitical, research to untangle the complex
interactions underscoring the considered questions within.
Keywords
Minority recruitment, women in policing, police–race relations, police personnel
The social unrest of the 1960s prompted three categories of police reform: the ascendance
of community-oriented policing (COP), greater civilian oversight and the creation of a
more diverse institution through the recruitment of women and visible minority group
members (Sklansky, 2006). The fallout from George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis,
including the ‘defund the police’initiative and a resurgence in Black Lives Matter–
focused protests, marked 2020 as an annus horribilis for the policing institution, not
just in the US but throughout the Western world (see Bourne, 2020). Now, 50 years after
the initial reforms inspired by the civil rights movement, just how much progress has been
achieved?
Corresponding author:
Stephen B Perrott, Professor of Psychology, Mount Saint Vincent University, 166 Bedford Highway, Halifax,
NS B3M 2J1, Canada.
Email: stephen.perrott@msvu.ca
It is the diversification of police personnel, and its impact on the institution, with which
this review is concerned. Although focused on Canadian reform, the experiences of other
English-speaking Western democracies are drawn upon for context, comparison and the
scarcity of Canadian-based studies. Moreover, US findings play a disproportionate role in
this review not only because of their availability but because of the impact that the
American experience has had on police practice, and perceptions thereof, throughout the
Western world (Goff and Kahn, 2012).
Arguments for employment equity (aka positive discrimination and affirmative action)
in police hiring fall into two categories: social justice and utilitarian. The justice rationale
focuses on redressing historic discrimination by having workplaces better reflect dis-
advantaged groups in numbers proportionate to their societal composition (Morabito and
Shelley, 2015). The practical goals with minority communities were to enhance cultural
competency and promote trust and with women to improve the insight and empathy
brought to victims. Moreover, women officers might also bring a less aggressive, more
calming, style to conflict resolution (Rabe-Hemp, 2008).
Women in Canadian policing
Progress in representation
The history of women in Canadian policing parallels that of the US and the UK where
more than a century has passed since women began to move from matron-only functions
(Myers, 1993;Schmidt, 2011); it was not until the 1970s that women began to enter roles
meant to be equivalent to those of men (Schmidt, 2011). Although initial aspirations were
to achieve an equal female-to-male ratio, by 2019 only 22% of Canada’s 68,718 police
officers were women (Statistics Canada, 2019). By comparison, by 2013, the UK stood at
27%, Australia 24% and New Zealand at 18% (Prenzler and Sinclair, 2013). The US
lagged at 12% with continuing low representation in small municipalities and rural areas
but with progress proximal to other western nations in urban areas (Archbold and Schulz,
2012).
After steadily increasing for two decades at about 0.75% per year on average in
Canada, growth has slowed over the last decade. So, whereas the period from 1990 to
1999 saw an increase of almost 7% in female representation, cumulative growth over the
last decade was just under 3% (Statistics Canada, 2019). This pattern of steady growth
followed by a levelling off has also been observed in the US (Cordner and Cordner, 2011),
Australia (Prenzler et al., 2010) and elsewhere (Prenzler and Sinclair, 2013). Although the
recruitment of women remains a priority, with an even greater emphasis in some ju-
risdictions (Ward et al., 2020), this plateauing effect seems to be well established
(Matusiak and Matusiak, 2018).
The movement of women up the ranks parallels overall growth with a predictable lag.
In 1986, when 5.4% of Canadian officers were women, only 0.5% were found in su-
pervisory and just 0.2% in management roles. By 2014, with 22.2% representation
overall, women held 17.6% of supervisory and 11% of management positions. By 2019,
those percentages had reached 20% and 19%, with promotions outpacing overall growth
Perrott 27
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