History is full of stories of men who carried out espionage or detective work for their nations, empires or kingdoms and this led to successful conquests and sweet victories in war. The few episodes with successful women detectives or spies assisting in gathering intelligence are never spoken of and if done, it is always in passing. The end result is societies with a firm believe in the ability of men to carry out detective work and the inability and unsuitability of women to do the same.
Still on the historical angle is the fact that traditionally, the role of the woman as always gotten the definition of sitting in the house, taking care of the kids and the compound as the men go out trying to understand and shape the ways of the world. The males used to get served with food already cooked by the females as the men told them stories of their conquests.
It is only recently that females began getting recognized as potential creatures with the ability to do all that their male counterparts are capable of doing. A second reason for the discrimination of females in detective work is the perceived weakness of women and the risks involved in the work. There are times when detectives are required to carry out arrests in the process of doing their work.
If the person who is supposed to be arrested is a man with a massive well built body and is not willing to be arrested, then it is definitely going to take the female detective some time to trick the culprit into accepting arrest. This is not the case with men, given that there is a minimum body size requirement for men who join the forces and in a case such as the one mentioned above, the culprit can easily be overcome by the policeman of the male detective.
This therefore means that any time hiring of detectives or police officers is done, more attention is given to men due to their natural physical ability to handle the responsibilities and risks that come with the job. This leads to male dominance in detective work (Baker, 2006). Just like in the case of male nurses, we have also not had women coming out to push for more considerations of females into detective work and the police force.
They have remained silent in the face of this huge gap and the result is continued discrimination against female detectives. Sexism is also to blame for the discrimination of females in detective work. Females who take such jobs as detective work and general police work are looked at by society as the ‘want it all type of women’ and are generally dismissed as the ‘witches on broomsticks’. This treatment leads to the general fear held by women with dreams and aspirations of joining the field of intelligence.