Gender And Police Stress Essay

Christopher Giacomelli
September 17, 2014
Gender and Police Stress In every profession there is a strong possibility for stress but in law enforcement the stress factors are more powerful then those of other professions. In the earlier years of law enforcement there have been tests and studies done to determine what exactly causes the stress and what methods worked to combat those stressful feelings for male police officers. However, in today’s society female police officers are becoming more prevalent in police agencies all around the world. This means that those tests that were performed in the past have to be modified to find out if there is an actual difference between gender and stress. The idea of stress brings up the idea of coping with that stress in a manner that is healthy for
that individual that is involved. There are two types of coping with stress the first is constructive such as talking to family or friends, relying on religion to help get through stressful situations and going to a support group, the second way to cope with stress is a destructive method such as excessive drinking, smoking cigarettes and drugs. Both of these approaches will help someone get over stress however going about coping with stress in a destructive manner will cause adverse affects on someone’s health and can cause issues in their personal life. In the field of law enforcement there are multiple different types of stress that can affect police officers male and female.
There are five major sources of stress for police officers as mentioned by Ni He, Jihong Zaho and Carol A. Archbold’s article “Gender and Police Stress” these five sources are “stress from the work environment, availability of peer support and trust, social and family influence, bureaucratic characteristics of police organizations and accessibility of coping mechanisms.” Even though these are five of the most prominent reasons for stress there are multiple other types and reasons for stress, these sources area touched on in during Gershon’s survey in 1999 including 943 male police officers and 157 female police officers in the Baltimore City Police Department. Gershon reviews the different types of stress (Somatization, Anxiety and Depression), the work environment (Negative Exposure, Camaraderie and Unfairness), work-family conflict (Spillover) and Coping (Constructive and Destructive). During the survey Gershon will find out if there is a difference between male officer stress and coping mechanisms versus female stress and coping
mechanisms. When Gershon checked the numbers of the type of stress felt by both male and female officers he found that when it came to Somatization female officers felt more (1.54) stress then the male officers (1.36), when he ran the numbers for Anxiety there was no real difference between male (1.27) and female (1.26), and finally when he checked Depression the females felt more (1.58) then the males (1.45). When it came to the work environment the males felt more (1.34) negative exposure then the females (1.22), male officers also felt more (3.62) camaraderie then the females (3.44), finally unfairness was also felt stronger by the male officers (3.04) then the female officers (2.81). Spillover is also seen more in the male police officers (2.40) then that of the female officers (2.30). When it came to the coping mechanism female officers seem to lean more towards the constructive coping idea more then the male officers and the male officers seemed to use the destructive coping mechanism more then the female officers.