With all of the talk about race in the aftermath of two high-profiled cases – one in Ferguson, Mo.; one in New York City – in which grand juries declined to indict police whose actions resulted in the deaths of two black men, few have considered that this may be as much a problem of gender as it is of race.

Looking at the leaders and experts who sat with President Barack Obama recently during a discussion of the explosive events in Ferguson, you saw white faces and black faces. What you didn’t see – or at least what I didn’t see – were many female faces.

Why is that? Studies have shown that female cops are better at diffusing difficult situations without resorting to violence or even one-upmanship. I hate to reduce the world to hormones, but I do think testosterone and the “mine is bigger than yours” mentality it fosters play a crucial role in male police officers’ responses to male suspects. Sure, education, racism, poverty, media stereotypes – these are all factors. But at the end of the day, women are generally – emphasis on the word “generally” – better at dealing with volatile moments.

That doesn’t mean that every incident can be handled with kid gloves. Nor does it suggest that it’s always easy to discern the situation in which force is necessary or the one in which discretion is truly the better part of valor.  

But it does point to the need for women to add their voices to the decision-making process, as Ali Torre observed when I talked to her recently about the Safe at Home Foundation that she and husband, former Yankee manager Joe Torre, founded to end domestic violence.

We need more women. We need more women in the NFL, not only to help the league sort out its domestic violence issues but also to tell young players like Colin Kaepernick, going through a bad stretch, that you don’t shove a cameraman out of the way because you’re having a lousy day at the office. That’s not going to improve your circumstances.  Indeed, culling ill will is one way to cloud them.

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