myAIPMGood leadership is about asking good questions
Melissa Bull, Danielle Watson, Sara N. Amin & Kerry Carrington | Police Practice and Research
Introduction
"Feminist scholars have drawn attention to the gender-biased nature of policing and been critical of its effects in relation to service delivery. They highlight how law enforcement is a male-dominated profession and how this impacts negatively on women (and children) both as offenders, but also as victims of crime (Prenzler & Sinclair, 2013; Ward, 2017). Historically this male bias has contributed to the invisibility of gender violence as a crime. Such criticisms have been forceful in mobilising international and national institutional support for more gender equitable representation in law enforcement agencies. Policing organisations across the world have worked to varying degrees to increase the number of women personnel at all levels and roles in service delivery (Prenzler & Sinclair, 2013). Research on women in policing has demonstrated how increasing numbers has led to improved security outcomes for women and children in both international and local settings. The presence of women police is said in particular to enhance increased reporting and reductions in violence against women and children (Bull et al., 2019; Carrington et al., 2019). This suggests that increasing numbers of female police in Pacific Island policing agencies may be particularly important because, despite more than 30 years of targeted criminal justice and social reform that has aimed to address the problem, violence against women persists as one of the most pressing crime problems across all countries in the region (Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration Trend Assessment Report 2012–2016 (2016). Some research has found, however, that simply increasing the numbers of women police alone may have little effect. Macintyre’s (2012) work with women police officers in Papua New Guinea (PNG) shows that, like their male counter parts, women officers were likely to see violence as an acceptable means of settling disputes with other women in matters where, for example, those women are deemed to pose a personal threat to their marriage or their family integrity.
Aside from this predicament, the goal of increasing the number of female police is challenged initially by the difficulty of attracting sufficient numbers of women to join policing services and take up law enforcement as a career. This is a problem even in states that have well-developed state policing agencies with supportive human resourcing policies and strong industrial relations frameworks (Prenzler & Sinclair, 2013). In Pacific Island Countries (PICs) institutional accommodation of women in policing agencies, and their role in service delivery, is further complicated by the intersection of gender norms associated with professional policing and those that exist in cultures typically characterised by patriarchal power relationships. For example, McLeod’s (2007) work with police in PNG identifies problems experienced by women police officers whereby they became the target of broader social resentment regarding the changing role of women in society. Her research described how women’s advancement in the PNG police force was undermined by husbands preventing their wives from engaging in work-related travel and cases where women police officers were punished for career achievements (Curth & Evans, 2011). Curth-Bibb (2014) research with Solomon Islands police identified similar-gendered expectations and barriers for women police officers. Other research describes how, in Pacific Island contexts, gender expectations embedded in alternative forms of regulatory authority that function alongside, and at times in competition with, or in the perceived or actual absence of, rule of law in these countries add further complexity (Bull et al., 2019).
This suggests that in the context of policing in PICs gender bias norms, both within policing organisations and across society more broadly, might act as a barrier to increasing numbers of women in police, and to how they might be able to function to enhance policing, increase reporting, and reduce violence against women and children. This paper addresses this dilemma. It does so by exploring police and community perceptions of the role of women in policing and attitudes to the social value of increasing their numbers and the roles they might perform. It draws on a larger study of stakeholder perceptions of police-community relations that was conducted across the nine islands of Tuvalu, focusing specifically on the gender-related aspects of survey and interview data that were collected. This article begins with a brief review of the research literature focused on women in policing, sketching the arguments for and against more inclusive and gender representative policing agencies. We then provide an overview of the Tuvaluan research context and some of the challenges that must be confronted to achieve organisational change. This provides the backdrop to our analysis which describes the empirical contours of community and police perceptions in relation to the role of women in policing in Tuvalu. The methodology section describes the processes of data collection and analysis used, before we outline and then discuss our results.
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Good leadership is about asking good questions, Melissa Bull, Danielle Watson, Sara N. Amin & Kerry Carrington, Police Practice and Research, 2020