Japanese Female Police Officers --- Forced Marginalization?

It has long been discussed that the career of female workers in male-dominant profession suffers in various ways; they suffer from work harassment; they underachieve to avoid being viewed as someone who is promoted because she is a woman; they feel alienated in a male-dominant professional culture; they are assigned ‘female’ task or position. Japanese female police officers make less than 7% of total and 1% of top 10% senior ranks (in Japan Chief Inspector or higher) are seemingly no exceptions to those. The presenter conducted questionnaire surveys with Japanese female officers (n=24) and male officers (n=50) in top 10% senior ranks in a local police force in a metropolitan area in 2015 to explore their career paths and career prospects, their evaluations on their own and opposite sex’s professional abilities and strengths, their professional networks and some demographic attributes to understand the struggles of female police officers and the root causes of their struggles. Furthermore, to identify the Japanese-specific factors in the male-dominant environment surrounding Japanese female police officers, the survey result is compared with the questionnaire (translated into English from the Japanese version) survey (n=53) that the presenter conducted in the Republic of Philippines in 2014 with a help from co-presenter. The presenter will discuss the discrepancies between male and female police officers in the evaluations of their own professional ability and that of the opposite sex’s, female police officers’ early diversion from high-flyer’s path and its causes to explore the depths of marginalization of female police officers, and on a side note, not-so-typical male police officers in Japan.