English

Abstract

This article is based on the proceedings of the National Conferences of Women in Police (NCWP), organised in India by the Bureau of Police Research and Training since 2002, in collaboration with the police departments of various states. It discusses the principal concerns raised by the NCWP in the last two decades. It argues that while security questions, old and new, including the safety of women, have been the province of police conferences on national security, women police in India have had to establish alternative channels, like the NCWP, to articulate their concerns as police workers, with their primary work continuing to be tied to the security of other women. Shaping the conversation about women police in policing institutions internally, these proceedings form a valuable contemporary archive in understanding the mobilisation of a collective voice by women police in a context where institutional rules prohibit and punish all unionisation. Rendered individuated and solitary, therefore, these Conferences have become the only available collective spaces where women in police have staked claims upon the state as its workers.