Police Culture and the Integration of Women Officers in India

Abstract

Broad social changes in developing countries such as India have resulted in the increased representation of women officers. The philosophy governing their integration into the police is that they should be treated equally to men and they should be provided with the same opportunities to undertake the same tasks. The influx of new cohorts of women into the police in recent years in India, resulting from its 1997 labour law legislation which required that 33 per cent of new hires for government organisations be women, provides the opportunity to examine how well women have been integrated into performing police tasks, how contented they are with their roles, how their male counterparts judge their performance and whether they accept women as equal partners. Using a survey questionnaire and an unstructured interview schedule, this study gathered data in 2010 from 222 men and 218 women police constables with 13 years or less service in the Tamil Nadu Police. The main finding of the study is that, in spite of the increased representation of women in the police force and their broad exposure to a wide range of duties, they are still negatively perceived by their male counterparts. This negative perception seems to have been internalised by women, many of whom reported that they prefer a traditional policing role. These findings suggest that the police should re-evaluate their gender integration policies, perhaps to include more gender-sensitive allocation of duties.