The occurrence of the more limited career prospects for female police officers has been explored for a number of years. A number of studies have suggested that the outcome of such experiences, in terms of the experience of occupational stress, tends to be more adverse for female police officers as compared to their male counterparts. Recent research has also been inconsistent in the suggestion that the frequently occurring organisational aspects of police work appear to have a greater influence on the prediction of psychological well being, as compared to the more infrequent traumatic (operational) incidents. This paper investigated this discrepancy within a mixed sample of British police officers. The inclusion of measures controlling for such individual differences as negative affectivity and work-specific coping behaviours, allowed psychological process operating within the well-being processes to be explored in some detail. A number of the expected gender differences were foundandtheir relation to female officers’ job competence, job satisfaction and psychological well-being are described, Gender differences were also established for some of the work hassles dimensions. This research describes how both organisational and operational characteristics of police work are experienced differently by both male and female police officers.
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Paula Brough (2002) studied this question.