Word: patrolwomen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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LAST WEEK's HEW briefing on the new Title IX guidelines that prohibit sex discrimination by institutions receiving federal money was an ideal situation for the Boston police to demonstrate just how progressive they are. "Why not assign one of our patrolwomen to the meeting," the officer in charge probably thought. "Hell, there will probably be mostly women at the briefing anyway...
...Boston's 23 patrolwomen (out of a total force of 2601) got the nod to cover the Faneuil Hall beat for the meeting, where organizations such as the National Organization for Women and Woman Power Newsletter spent almost two hours skeptically questioning HEW's Gwenn Gregory about the new guidelines. The Boston police officer was right, you could count the number of men in the 300 occupied seats on your hands--and half of them were the camera crews for local television stations. But just in case there was any trouble the officer had assigned a big burly male sargeant...
...cars and nodding to others to turn left. The other stood in the middle of the street about 20 feet up from the intersection. It was hard to figure out quite what she was supposed to be doing, but at least everyone who drives through Lancaster knows they have patrolwomen to supplement their metermaids...
Perhaps the most annoying on-the-job irritant women officers faced: hostility from male officers. Patrolmen persisted in the belief that women officers were not fit partners for them, while patrolwomen more modestly concluded that under most circumstances they were as good as but no better than men. Yet under stress there may well have been a female advantage. Noted one policewoman wryly: "A lot of times a female officer is not only able to be cool, calm and persuasive with the disorderly; she can also help to do the same with her male partner...
...Catherine H. Milton, assistant director of the Police Foundation, an organization that promotes new methods of law enforcement. Her prodding is apparently winning some converts among police chiefs. About 45 women are currently pounding police beats across the U.S., and the first large-scale experiment in the use of patrolwomen is under way in Washington, D.C., where the metropolitan police force is hiring 100 women for regular patrol duty. Still, resistance to the trend-mostly from officials who think being a patrolman is too dangerous for the "weaker sex"-must be overcome before many more of the nation...