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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to establish empirically whether there is any foundation in the premise that female officers' lesser tenure and/or lower levels of commitment than men explain their lack of career progress. Although the number of women in UK police forces has grown rapidly, it appears that they continue to be under‐represented in senior ranks.Design/methodology/approachUsing whole population surveys of two county police forces in the UK the paper compares the promotion of men and women police officers controlling for tenure. The paper then compares the organisational commitment of male and female officers and analyses whether female officers experience managerial and organisational influences that undermine their organisational commitment compared to men.FindingsThe findings refute some of the widespread beliefs about reasons for female officers' lack of progress in their policing careers since the analysis indicates that gender differences in length of tenure and organisational commitment can be discounted as possible explanations for lack of advancement in these two police forces. Overall, the results clearly show that female officers are just as committed as male officers and thus cannot be justified as a reason for lack of career progression.Research limitations/implicationsIt is accepted that survey methods such as ours do not capture the entirety of employee feelings and responses since they tend to homogenise male and female working experiences. However, survey methods do have the advantage that it is possible to generalise from the results and thus these two studies allow us to suggest that our findings can be viewed as providing insights to other UK police forces.Practical implicationsThe relatively low levels of organisational commitment found should be a cause for concern for senior managers in the Police. The key importance that management has in influencing organisational commitment has been shown by our findings and this indicates the importance of the current Police Leadership Development Board's agenda to improve workforce management skills to encourage transformational leadership styles.Originality/valueThe paper make an original contribution by refuting widely held assumptions about the reasons for under‐representation of female officers in senior ranks. It also contributes to the sparse literature that examines organisational commitment in the police and its antecedents.

Explores the faking‐good of personality questionnaire results in occupational settings. Identifies three specific lines of research into faking‐good: first, whether it is possible for candidates to fake‐good personality questionnaire results; second, whether faking‐good adversely affects the criterion validity of personality questionnaire results; third, whether candidates actually engage in faking‐good behaviour. Notes, in relation to this third line of enquiry, the lack of information about the views of candidates and potential users of personality questionnaires towards the faking‐good of personality questionnaire results. Proceeds to explore the views of 190 people employed in personnel departments in the North‐West of England towards various issues associated with the faking‐good of personality questionnaire results. These issues include: the ease with which personality questionnaire results can be faked; the ease with which faking‐good can be detected; the extent to which candidates actually fake‐good; the ethics of faking‐good responding. The implications of the study focus on matters such as the face validity of personality questionnaires, the training of test users and the future development of non‐transparent fake‐good scales.