Record Details


Field	Value

Title	Replication Data for: Blue First and Foremost: Female Descriptive Representation, Rape, and the Justice Gap

Identifier	https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/GDAABE

Creator	Gunderson, Anna Laura Huber

Publisher	Harvard Dataverse

Description	The degree to which female political actors influence policy is hotly debated in political science. However, relatively little research considers how women's representation in the police influences policing outcomes. We argue that increasing women's representation should be associated with increases in rape report rates but should not be associated with changes in rape arrest rates. We expect public perceptions of female police to affect victims' willingness to report and cooperate with the police, but the masculine, hierarchical, and complex nature of police investigations of rape will make it difficult for those report increases to translate into increases in arrests for those crimes. We leverage unique police administrative data from 1987 to 2016 and find that while women's representation is associated with increased rape report rates, there is no relationship with rape arrest rates, highlighting an important justice gap. Our paper has implications not only for the study of female representation and representative bureaucracy, but also provides insights into how descriptive representation may be limited by institutional culture, norms, practices, and procedures.

Subject	Social Sciences Police Gender Female

Contributor	Huber, Laura

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