Safety and Gender Intelligence

Gender Intelligence Show

"Over the last 40 years, studies have shown that female officers are less authoritarian in their approach to policing, less reliant on physical force and are more effective communicators. Most importantly, female officers are better at defusing potentially violent confrontations before those encounters turn deadly."

Hiring & Retaining More Women: The Advantages to Law Enforcement Agencies Kimberly A. Lonsway Link to study: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED473183

In this podcast, Barbara explains that she first began to consider the connection between Gender Intelligence and safety in the early 90s when some of her clients shared stories with her about how teams with women tended to outscore all-male teams on the implementation of safety practices in the workplace.

Since then, many research studies have confirmed it. Barbara says that would reflect the brain differences between the genders. Because women think more contextually, they tend to be more detail oriented, and also tend to employ consequential thinking to a higher degree. In contrast men tend to be more transactional in their thinking and focused on accomplishing the task at hand. Barbara and Paul reflect on the research that demonstrates the benefits of having women in policing. Barbara explains the differences in the Amygdala, and how testosterone affects men and women differently. She shared the story of Vale, the global mining company that pivoted to embrace all forms of diversity including gender, after a tragedy in Brazil.

Additional Material:

Link to Barbara’s interview with Vale’s Chief Operating Officer, Dino Otranto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GXRAe2qFJA

Gender Disparities in Injury Mortality: Consistent, Persistent and Larger Than You’d Think https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222499/

How Covid-19 is Changing Women’s Lives https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200630-how-covid-19-is-changing-womens-lives

A Simple Solution to Policing Problems: Women! Mindy E. Bergman, Jessica M. Walker, Vanessa A. Jean, Texas A&M University https://www.icos.umich.edu/sites/default/files/lecturereadinglists/bergman_walker_jean%20(2016)%20IOP%20women%20policing.pdf