Women in State Police Forces

Several years ago a colleague at Fairmont State College in West Virginia planted a thought in my head. She suggested that a study should be done to better understand why some states have more female officers in their state-level law enforcement agency(ies). I've decided to set up this blog to provide some insights into how this question can be researched, including the challenges of locating data and operationalizing variables.

One of the first things that needs to be considered is the question of what constitutes a state-level law enforcement agency. The second, and hardly less important, consideration is: What is a female officer?

In terms of data, we'll start with the data collected by the Uniform Crime Reports:

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_76.html

Thoughts? Questions?