«Challenges Women and Minorities Face in Recruitment and Employment» - Free Essay Paper

Policing refers to the regulation and control of the community for the maintenance of order. Recruitment refers to the overall procedure of attracting, selecting and appointing suitable persons to a job either on a permanent or temporary basis. Women and minority groups constitute the policing personnel. However, the section of policing personnel often encounters several challenges that this paper underscores.

The majority group in policing consists of men who often have impartial opinion towards women and the minority groups in policing. They stick to the notion that women and the minorities are ineffective and incompetent in policing field. Therefore, the attitude of the women and the minority groups towards policing has changed over the years. The negative perceptions about women and minority groups have led to their low recruitment and retention in policing as the men perceive them as non-performers in the field.

Most adult females and minority groups have shied off from policing due to the low pay in the field. The policing employees have always put forward a complaint of benefit shortages and low payment, which has contributed to the low recruitment and retention of the minority groups as well as women. The minority groups, especially younger workers, have thus resorted to switching tasks from the policing sector to other sectors that they find they can work best and get a respectable pay.

The policing area has also faced issues of retaining the two groups due to lack of benefits. For instance, a study has shown that most officers leave an agency due to the lack of fringe benefits. The deficiency in benefits creates difficulties for police departments, which invest considerable time and resources in selecting and training officers, just to have them go away after a short term. The absence of remunerations, bonuses is the reason for resigning of the minority groups in the policing field. The policing area has also put in place stringent measures that make it difficult for the women and minority groups to seek employment in the field. The steps that came with the new Homeland (FBI and CIA) Security mandates have indeed contributed to the reduced employment and retention of the two groups within the policing field.

The low level of high-ranking female role models in the policing field has led to the low recruitment of women as there are no women to inspire the others. Likewise, the few women who are in the field face a great deal of challenges that they find difficult to go through as they lack role models in the field.

Women have always found it difficult to balance between work and life issues. The work-life issues have proved to be a difficult and a great obstacle for them in policing. Policing is a tough job that is why to be successful at both work and home can be challenging. Some women end up resigning from their jobs while others end up shying away from this field. As an outcome, it has made it unmanageable to retain women employees in the field.

Law enforcement sector faces a crisis in recruiting and retaining the minority groups due to the declining public confidence and faith that has been advanced by the negative media attention as well as with the police corruption outrages. The policing field over the few years has had highly publicized incidents of excessive force and police corruption that have generated shocking headlines, thus culminating into the low recruiting of women and minority groups who shy away from the profession.

In conclusion, the recruitment and retention of women and minority groups has posed greater challenge to the policing field due to the low wages, the few number of women role models in the field, the ever increasing corruption scandals and the policing fields’ rigorous prerequisites.