Policeman in Skirt

Do not think that in the photograph dated 1908, the moment of detention of this criminal is captured by a police officer. In fact, this is just one of the photos of a photo shoot organized as part of the advancement of the American project The Woman Cop ("Woman-Police").

The movement of the sulfur, fought against legal and professional discrimination of women, began to be issued in the middle of the XIX century in America, and each perceived their ideas in the best of their corruption. For example, the French Illustrator and Publisher Albert Berger released in 1902 on the feet of the public a deck of "Girls of the Future" cards, on the "shirts" of which are in jokingly, and sometimes women engaged in male professions: doctor, lawyer, sailor, teacher Fencing. There was a caricature on a woman – a rural police officer: a sexy girl with cereal hands, deep neckline, in a triangle and with a checker.

As for the concept of "Policeman", reflected in our photo, the essence of the problem was that, expanding the functions of women in a law enforcement system, they were simultaneously refused to endow the real powers and status of police officer.

Even when in 1905, the Department of Public Security on the Protection of Young Women and Girls appeared in Portland (Oregon), not POLICEMAN appeared to the employees of this department, and PoliceWoman, which emphasized their gender affiliation and professional inferiority.

And the souffringers achieved a fundamental change in status: the rights of women to be listed by police officers, to have a personal token, weapons, make all the investigative actions and produce arrests.

The breakthrough in this direction occurred in 1909, when an employee of the social service of Eliss Stebbins Wells convinced the Los Angeles City Council to expand the powers of women and attract them to preventive and prompt work with women, children and adolescents as full-fledged police officers with relevant rights and obligations.