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Gay. Female. Cop. Is that you?

New study wants to hear your ‘unique challenges’
BarriePoliceHat
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The officer's colleagues know she’s married with a wife.

But when asked to be profiled in a story about a study of gay female police officers, there's silence.

Then a polite ‘no.'  

“Oh, I’d have to think about it,” the officer said, agreeing to be mentioned only if she and her police service are not named.  

Academic researcher Joe Couto isn't surprised.

Couto knows the score after publishing a landmark study on LGBT officers in Ontario in 2014, a Master’s thesis produced for Royal Roads University.

“I would characterize it in baseball terms - already having two strikes against you when you’re starting your career as a police officer if you’re both female and gay. That doesn’t mean that you’re going to strike out but it means you’re already in the hole,” Couto said. 

His current research study is called ‘Gay. Female. Cop. The Intersectionality of Gender and Sexual Orientation in Police Culture.'

It aims to learn challenges facing gay female officers and how they find their place in a hypermasculine job culture - where you're expected to be a 'super he-man.'

"Traditionally that’s how females have sought to fit in is to become one of the boys and just by their gender alone they can never be one of the boys - but they try," said Couto, who is the director of government relations and communications for the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police

His unprecedented 2014 study that explored the lives of LGBT officers in the province - 'Covered in Blue: Police Culture and LGBT Police Officers in the Province of Ontario' - found that while policing has come a long way, female gay officers still feel unacknowledged. 

And many of those officers asked Couto to focus on them.  

“They felt their voice as women, as a subculture in policing sometimes isn’t recognized or understood because the gender issues are so huge in policing that the fact that they’re also gay officers gets lost in the mix,” said Couto.

His study is completely anonymous. He says many of the officers aren’t out at work so their privacy needs to be protected. The police service will never know who contacts him. 

 He feels policing needs to recognize that despite all of the advancements in terms of diversity and inclusion, the profession still has very deep roots in being heterosexual and male dominated.

"I think police leaders by and large get it but culture in policing is so deep engrained that it’s an evolutionary process rather than a revolutionary process,” said Couto,

Questions include how accepted the officers feel, their experiences, both negative and positive. 

"One of the things I did find in my previous study was that the younger officers tend to have more positive experiences and that’s reflected in the culture change in society where we’re more accepting of LGBT people," he said. 

The study also asks officers what would they say if they could talk directly to someone in the service who could make a difference, like a Chief of Police.

"What recommendations you might make to them, like changes to HR practices, changes to accommodations for women. The kind of messaging the police service puts out. I want this not just to be a litany of negatives but also hopefully a list of positives that police can actually take forward and say we can change things.”

Joe Couto can be contacted at [email protected]

 


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Sue Sgambati

About the Author: Sue Sgambati

Sue has had a 30-year career in journalism working for print, radio and TV. She is a proud member of the Barrie community.
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