https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085118763083 Feminist Criminology 1–22 © The Author(s) 2018 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1557085118763083 journals.sagepub.com/home/fcx Original Manuscript Policing Women’s Bodies: Pregnancy, Embodiment, and Gender Relations in Canadian Police Work Debra Langan 1 , Carrie B. Sanders 1 , and Julie Gouweloos 2 Abstract Despite the influx of women in policing, women continue to face barriers to their full inclusion. In this article, we put women’s bodies at the center of our analysis by theorizing how pregnancy shapes the gendered interactions and experiences of women police at work. Through in-depth, qualitative interviews with 52 Canadian officers, we find that pregnancy frames women’s bodies “out of order” for “police work” and positions women even further from the ideal police body, which is ostensibly male. In response, women engage in myriad strategies to reassert their value as officers, strategies that require women to do additional labor. Keywords policing, qualitative research, women, women as professionals in the Criminal Justice System, bodies, organization, culture Despite the growing presence of women in male-dominated jobs, women continue to be marginalized and marked as “Other,” particularly in traditionally masculine work contexts. Policing is one such example. Despite the influx of women in policing, women continue to face barriers to their full inclusion. In response, women negotiate their gender in very specific ways to “fit” into police cultures. Specifically, women officers manage a delicate balance between being feminine enough to avoid disrupting the gender binary, yet masculine enough to be taken seriously as an officer (see Garcia, 1 Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford, Ontario, Canada 2 McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada Corresponding Author: Debra Langan, Department of Criminology, Wilfrid Laurier University, 73 George Street, Brantford, Ontario, Canada N3T 2Y3. Email: dlangan@wlu.ca 763083FCX XX X 10.1177/1557085118763083Feminist CriminologyLangan et al. research-article 2018