Résumé
This work investigates the relationship between the gender division of labour within the Ottawa Carleton Regional Police Service and the construction of femininity by police women. A triangulation of methodologies was used, including participant observation, and semi-structured field interviews, in order to understand the construction of femininity among police women in interaction with co-workers, civilians and family/community members. Employing a structured action approach the study revealed the importance of viewing the construction of femininity by police women as fluid, diverse and adaptive. A framework referred to as the web of bounded knowledgeability was developed to visualize the interrelationship between the structures and relationships channelling women's knowledge of their career choices. This approach makes visible the use of resources including power, control and authority in the construction of femininity by police women not typically available to women in Canadian society. Such an approach allowed a fuller understanding of police women's relationship to the police organization and the choices individual police women make in regards to their occupational life. Consistent with this approach, we can account for variation in the gender division of labour within and between police agencies as the differential availability to police women of resources used to construct femininity, e.g., interaction with members of the public, family and intimate relationships, single person patrols vs. patrolling with a partner etc. Consequently, as the resources used by police women to construct their femininity change, the construction of femininity will change revealing different patterns of a gendered division of labour.