Women Doing a Man's Job: Female Prison Officers Working in a Male Prison *

Abstract

This article concerns the integration difficulties of female prison officers working in the traditionally male prison environment at Pentridge Prison. Because the role of prison officer is highly male-stereotyped, it was believed that the integration problems experienced by female prison officers working in male prisons would be accentuated. A semi-structured interview research methodology was used to collect data from 24 female and 21 male prison officers. The findings suggested that the job of a prison officer at Pentridge was highly male-stereotyped, which created several integration difficulties for female officers. However, while female officers may have performed the job differently, they were not disadvantaged promotionally indicating that the organisation recognised them as competent prison officers.