DeKalb Police Sgt. Lisa Miller said she became a police officer 15 years ago because “it seemed like an interesting job where you’re not doing the same thing every day.”

Miller is one of four women in the DeKalb Police Department as well as the first and the only police officer in her family.

Female police officers are a minority in DeKalb – just four of the 60 officers are women. Rockford’s police department employs 47 women out of 303 officers, and the Illinois State troopers employ 212 female officers out of 2,050.

Nationally, the story is similar. Eleven percent of local police staff are women, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

“It’s still a non-traditional job for women,” Miller said.

Stephanie Regas, an officer with the DeKalb Police Department, said some women are intimidated because law enforcement is a male-dominated field. Following in the footsteps of her mother, she started working with the DeKalb police in 2001.

It’s a choice she has yet to regret – her male colleagues are supportive, so long as she does her job well, and she doesn’t feel like she is held to a higher standard.

Kristen Myers, an associate professor of sociology, said not only do women need to deal with the requirements of the job, but they also need to work in the masculine culture associated with law enforcement.

“Gender and sexuality are always interconnected in every workplace, they just really stand out in a traditionally masculine or feminine occupation,” Myers said.

Traditional stereotypes characterize women as passive, nurturing, weak creatures seen as getting in the way of doing a good job.

“Women are seen, whether or not this is accurate, as the embodiment of this narrow vision of femininity,” Myers said.

These characteristics are useful when dealing with victims of abuse or rape, but an officer must also know when to switch off the empathy and find a balance.

Part of that is learned in police training academies, where the regimens are the same for men and women.

Combating gender stereotypes is not the only determinant keeping women, still society’s primary care-givers, out of law enforcement. The DeKalb Police Department schedules its officers in shifts varying from early morning to overnight, and holiday-leave is not guaranteed. Although officers have choices, a number of factors go into making yearly schedules. Officers with seniority usual get shifts requested and the best holidays off. Scheduling depends on the needs of the police department, but efforts are made to ensure officers are not running the night shift all year.

Conditions for working mothers improved in 1993 when the Family and Medical Leave Act passed. This act allows for employees to take a 12-week unpaid leave of absence from work due to sickness, the sickness of a family member or the birth of a child.

Editor’s note: This is part of a weekly series examining the status of women in DeKalb County.