Author Janis Appier traces the origins of women in police work, explaining how pioneer policewomen's struggles to gain secure footholds in big city policy departments ironically helped to make modern police work one of the most male-dominated occupations in the United States.

In the Los Angeles Police Department, the first to hire women, and in other major cities, policewomen's roles were constructed as maternalistic. Scrutinizing case records, public statements, and departmental policies governing policewomen, Appier shows how female officers handled the complex gender politics of their work with the public and within their departments.

She reveals that many of these pioneering policewomen succeeded in expanding the scope of police work and carving out a rewarding professional niche, despite continued attempts to oust them or limit their sphere of action. But this advancement was short-lived; within a generation a masculinized model of crime fighting took hold, and policewomen's authority eroded.