ABSTRACT
Using data from a survey conducted within a northern constabulary, women officers' experience of police employment is discussed. It is argued that it is necessary to take into account both wider structural, engendered inequalities and occupational cultural processes to explain differences between men and women officers' experience of employment. Evidence of women officers' apparent acceptance and reinforcement of views associated with the police occupational culture is presented. These views were not directly constrained by the ascendancy of men's definitions of police employment. It is also suggested, however, that men's views of the wider role of women, as parent, for example, constrained and engendered the ways in which women experienced police employment.
