Breaking and Entering: Women Cops Talk About Life in the Ultimate Men's Club - Hardcover

Fletcher, Connie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060173114 ISBN 13: 9780060173111

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1995

Synopsis

Based on interviews with female police personnel throughout the country, a journalist illuminates the experience of being a woman in a dangerous job, including life-threatening situations on the street and discrimination, hostility, and sexual harassment in the station house. $25,000 ad/promo. Tour.

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Reviews

If a policeman's lot is a difficult one, that of an American policewoman is infinitely harder. This is the message that Fletcher (What Cops Know) imparts in her well-organized compendium of the experiences of 106 female officers she interviewed nationwide. In sections on life at the academy, in the stationhouse, in the patrol car and at home, all the women, whether they joined the force in 1947 or 1991, have reached the same conclusion: every police department is a men's club, and women are not wanted. Still, if a policewoman proves herself to be a "man" by actions like engaging in a fight with a perpetrator, she can win a kind of grudging acceptance. Since all police officers supposedly live by the code "You don't rat and you don't complain," woe betide the woman who violates that code. She will be ostracized and would probably be best advised to resign. The situation has improved in the last 20 years, but not by much, conclude the candid interviewees in this informative but depressing analysis. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The law-enforcement environment has long been dominated by men, but in the last 30 years or so, the number of female cops has increased. The transition has been painful. Fletcher, whose two previous books--What Cops Know (1990) and Pure Cop (1991)--were oral histories of modern cop life, here focuses on the female law-enforcement experience. She interviewed dozens of female cops across a wide range spanning age, rank, urban and rural environments, and differing job duties. The stories these women tell about their training, their first patrols, life as a partner, and even their encounters with males cops' wives all share common themes, the most overriding of which is how difficult it's been for women to become good cops. Vivid testimony is offered on the humiliations of daily insults at the police academies, on the crude sexual jokes that must be endured the first day on the job, and on the constant agony of living with discrimination and harassment. There's also plenty of anecdotal detail on gender differences in handling street situations: men tend to confront, women to negotiate. Once again, Fletcher provides an extraordinary glimpse inside a world too often seen only in fiction. This is the real deal, and it's as good as any crime novel. Wes Lukowsky

Edition details

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060173114
• ISBN 13: 9780060173111
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320