Three women who work in public safety, detective Amy Price, left, and officers Kristen Kennedy and Meagan Horvath are pictured last week outside the Law Enforcement Center. Women remain a minority in public safety jobs.

Lawrence Detective Amy Price remembers her father telling her to do anything “other than writing ads for a deodorant company” when she was a Kansas University junior at a career crossroads.

Officer Meagan Horvath read Nancy Drew novels as a child, dreaming of being a detective. And Officer Kristen Kennedy followed the footsteps of her father and grandfather in becoming an officer last year.

While Price nears her 19th year with the Lawrence Police Department, Horvath and Kennedy were hired within the last three years. Their police academy classes had more female candidates than those in the past, but the percentage of female candidates remains small and the industry continues to be vastly male.

“Ideally you want your department to represent your population,” said Horvath, who was one of seven women hired in her academy.

Still a minority

The Lawrence Police Department employed 17 female officers last year, said Sgt. Trent McKinley, a department spokesman, and the department added six males and one female earlier this month as part of its 2014 academy.

The percentage of female officers in Lawrence increased more than 3 percent from 2009 to 2012, but it’s below average among the 28 departments with which Lawrence compares itself in an annual benchmark survey. McKinley said the number of female applicants remains significantly lower than the number of male applicants and that Lawrence fights a nationwide trend: less than 15 percent of state and local police and sheriff’s officers are female, according to Bureau of Justice statistics.

According to the most recent data, from 2012, 8.8 percent of Lawrence officers were female, slightly more than Olathe (8.5 percent) and below similarly sized Columbia, Mo. (18.1 percent).

Women also remain a minority at other local agencies like the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, where 20 of its 158 full- and part-time employees are female deputies or corrections officers, and at Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical, where seven of its 141 uniformed personnel are women.

“You don’t hear that much about the women in the field,” said Karen Glotzbach, who is approaching her 14th year as an engineer and paramedic for fire medical. “We see all of these men doing the job, but you don’t see a lot of the women.”

‘We can do this’

That isn’t because they aren’t out there. After Sgt. Laurie Powell, who has been with Lawrence Police for about 20 years, was promoted last year, she said was surprised to see calls responded to by groups containing only female officers.

Today, it’s not uncommon for new female employees at local public safety agencies to begin working for other women in positions of leadership. In her nine years, Jen Carlson, a Douglas County Sheriff’s deputy, has worked for two already: Lt. Lisa Brown in the corrections division and Sgt. Kristen Dymacek on patrol.

“Coming in and seeing there are these females already in the rank structure, I was able to see that, hey, we can do this,” Carlson said.

As one of the only women in her academy, Powell said she didn’t want to be the one female officer to stand out for poor performance. Neither did she want any promotion to be the result of a quota.

Once on the job, Horvath said, she didn’t feel alienated. Instead, she said, her male peers treated her like a sister or daughter. Kennedy, still trying to get her foot in the door, agreed.

“I don’t want to be known as a good female officer,” Kennedy said. “I want to be a good officer and not singled out as a female.”

“But inevitably you will be in reality,” Price told her. “Maybe not be your peers but in the public.”

‘People stare’

It’s not uncommon for bystanders to do a double-take, or outright stare, when they see a female officer, Powell said.

“They can’t seem to wrap their head around seeing a female in a police uniform,” she said.

Dymacek, who joined the sheriff’s office six years ago after working at a newspaper in Baldwin City, said she tries to take advantage of the looks she receives — especially by younger girls.

“I think by people seeing us just doing the job and seeing more of us … they are becoming more accustomed to that,” she said.

Brown said her uniform draws interest when she wears it to any of her five children’s schools. Many children in the community, she said, have come to call her “Mom.” And Carlson said her 7-year-old daughter and her friends huddle around her cruiser when she brings it home, pressing their faces against the glass and asking to sit in the cage in the back.

As for attracting more female candidates, McKinley said local agencies must compete with each other and other area agencies for the same pool of applicants. How they reach them has evolved.

Price said she found out about the Lawrence Police opening from a flyer on campus. Dymacek pursued an opening in Baldwin City after she read a story in her paper about women in public safety. More recently, Lawrence Police’s social media job postings captured the attention of younger officers like Kennedy. But noting the nature of the work — the hours, exposure to “stuff not everybody can see” — Carlson said it takes a special kind of person to respond to the job opening, no matter how it’s announced.