Female Police Research Articles

Improving of Special Physical Fitness and Workability of Female Police Cadets

The importance of evaluating the physical fitness of future police officers cannot be underestimated. Ideal physical training program must include targeting aerobic capacity, anaerobic power, muscular strength and endurance. The aim of the study: investigate the impact of two additional supervised 16-week physical fitness training programs (mixed (jumping + strength endurance) workout and CrossFit training) aimed at female police cadets. Participants: relatively healthy young female (n=28) – cadets had similar indicators of physical fitness and workability. Total time of physical training – 64 hours during 16 weeks (basic workouts – 48 hours, additional workouts – 16 hours). Group 1 (n=14) practiced additional CrossFit training. Group 2 (n=14) practiced mixed additional workout (jumping + strength endurance). Tests used to evaluate the physical fitness and workability were the following: Push–Up test, Plank test, Running test, Burpee test, Step test (PWC170), test with 30 throws. The overall positive dynamics of study results shows an increase of workability for all study participants. A reliable (p≤0.05) advantage of participants (group 2) in testing workability results (Burpee test and PWC170) was found. Experts agree that the most effective physical training programs for cadets and police officers will be combinations of intensive cardiorespiratory and strength workout. A positive impact of additional mixed (jumping + strength endurance) workout on the workability of female cadets was found. Such functional workout can be an effective alternative to CrossFit training in physical training curriculum of female police cadets

Women in Policing and Legitimacy: A Vignette-Based Study of Symbolic Representation

Using a two-by-two vignette-based experimental design, this study aimed to examine the effects of women’s symbolic representation in sexual assault units and the arrest rate for interpersonal violence cases on individuals’ perceptions of police legitimacy, support for leadership, and willingness to engage in bystander intervention behaviors. Using responses from 357 students attending one university in the Midwest, the results showed that a higher level of women’s representation was associated with more police legitimacy and greater support for the leader when the agency had a low arrest rate. Whereas police legitimacy was related to bystanders’ intentions to intervene, women’s representation in the unit and the arrest rate was not. The findings indicate that women’s representation in policing strengthens the support for the police in gendered areas when the agency is underperforming.

Dampak Motivasi Kerja, Kepuasan dan Kinerja Polisi Wanita

The organization's ability to successfully achieve its goals is supported by internal and external factors of the organization. Employee performance is generally driven by security, social, self-actualization rewards. The female police force has grown rapidly. However, almost no research has examined the motivation of policewomen to join law enforcement and performance. The purpose of this study was to determine and analyze the impact of work motivation on female police by mediating job satisfaction of the police, totaling 61 people at the Ponorogo Police. Data collection in this study was carried out through a survey approach through quantitative descriptive research by distributing questionnaires to 61 respondents. The data analysis method used is path analysis. The results showed that work motivation has an influence on job satisfaction. The second result, work motivation has an influence on performance and the third result of job satisfaction has an influence on performance. The overall findings for this study suggest that motivation theory is an explanatory framework where organizational identification impacts job satisfaction. Moreover, it is inversely related to satisfaction not shown to play a mediating role in the relationship between motivation and performance of female police officers

Adaptive work in the primary health care response to domestic violence in occupied Palestinian territory: a qualitative evaluation using Extended Normalisation Process Theory

BackgroundA health system response to domestic violence against women is a global priority. However, little is known about how these health system interventions work in low-and-middle-income countries where there are greater structural barriers. Studies have failed to explore how context-intervention interactions affect implementation processes. Healthcare Responding to Violence and Abuse aimed to strengthen the primary healthcare response to domestic violence in occupied Palestinian territory. We explored the adaptive work that participants engaged in to negotiate contextual constraints.MethodsThe qualitative study involved 18 participants at two primary health care clinics and included five women patients, seven primary health care providers, two clinic case managers, two Ministry of Health based gender-based violence focal points and two domestic violence trainers. Semi-structured interviews were used to elicit participants’ experiences of engaging with HERA, challenges encountered and how these were negotiated. Data were analysed using thematic analysis drawing on Extended Normalisation Process Theory. We collected clinic data on identification and referral of domestic violence cases and training attendance.ResultsHERA interacted with political, sociocultural and economic aspects of the context in Palestine. The political occupation restricted women’s movement and access to support services, whilst the concomitant lack of police protection left providers and women feeling exposed to acts of family retaliation. This was interwoven with cultural values that influenced participants’ choices as they negotiated normative structures that reinforce violence against women. Participants engaged in adaptive work to negotiate these challenges and ensure that implementation was safe and workable. Narratives highlight the use of subterfuge, hidden forms of agency, governing behaviours, controls over knowledge and discretionary actions. The care pathway did not work as anticipated, as most women chose not to access external support. An emergent feature of the intervention was the ability of the clinic case managers to improvise their role.ConclusionsFlexible use of ENPT helped to surface practices the providers and women patients engaged in to make HERA workable. The findings have implications for the transferability of evidenced based interventions on health system response to violence against women in diverse contexts, and how HERA can be sustained in the long-term.

Keep Calm and Carry on – There Is Nothing to See Here: A Study of Organisational Response Towards Racist Bullying and Harassment of BAME Women in Policing

This article explores the neglected and under-researched area of bullying and harassment of Black and Asian Ethnic Minority (BAME) women in the police service in England. Undertaken within the context of an observed and unique crisis stemming from the high-profile case of bullying by the Home Secretary Rt Hon. Priti Patel towards her former Permanent Secretary, Sir Philip Rutnam and the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson’s reaction to it. This paper argues, that the turning of the tables by the Home Secretary and the fall-out from the investigation to it, could have adverse and unintended consequences for BAME women in UK policing. It is as this article argues a future mea-culpa moment waiting to happen underpinned by the political push back against the Black Lives Matters movement. A mixed method approach has been applied to this research including, interviews, data analysis of recently published figures, review of published literature and recent case studies. The article concludes that women of colour are one of the most vulnerable groups within the police. The challenges that they face within the organisation need to be recognised as they felt, their experiences were ignored and it undermined them as individuals. This was compounded by their negative experience of reporting instances of bullying and harassment.

Rethinking gender and conduits of control: A feminist review

The South African Constitution has been hailed as one of the most progressive in the world and has received high acclaim internationally (Mkhwanazi 2016:6). However, the war on women, their bodies and their right to self-determination persists, irrespective of the Constitution. Literature reveals experiences of brutal rapes and killings of black lesbian women, as well as mistreatment and hate speech in the name of morality against sex workers, women seeking abortions and HIV-positive women (Strode et al. 2012:64). Based on a desktop review of images and audio-visuals of women's narratives in South Africa, this paper finds that many of the country's contemporary social institutions, such as the state, family, church and culture, amongst others, normalise forms of gendered violence, such as the policing, control and exploitation of women's lives and bodies through cultural practices like ukuthwala and ukuhlolwa kwobuntombi. Research findings also include narratives of women, who - in spite of prevailing social and institutionalised violence - have leveraged personal agency to declare autonomy and make personal choices regarding their bodies and lives. Keywords: gendered violence, LGBTI people, patriarchal societies, rape, ukuhlolwa kwobuntombi.

Are contextual influences and statutory law empathy impetuses to police attitude to domestic violence against women in Lagos State?

The Lagos State Statutory (Protection against Domestic Violence) Law was enacted on March 18, 2007 to protect inhabitants of the State against all forms of domestic violence. In spite of the enactment of this law, many inhabitants of Lagos State are still imperiled to emotional, psychological and physical traumas arising from domestic violence. This study validated contextual influences and the understanding of statutory law protecting women against domestic violence in Lagos State. Contextual influences were captured as socio-demographic characteristics, sociocultural and economic factors. The study adopted the quantitative cross-sectional research design method. Information was sourced randomly among police personnel across Police Divisions within the State Police Command from July to November, 2019. The Fishers sampling technique was employed to arrive at a sample size of 312 from a total population of 1650 police personnel in Lagos State. Stata version 14 was used in data analysis. The results showed that a biased approach to domestic violence against women was higher among male (87%) than female (13%) police personnel. A biased approach to domestic violence against women was higher among non-commissioned (65.2%) than commissioned (34.5%) police personnel. Contextual influences such as sociodemographic, sociocultural and economic factors, as well as police understanding of statutory law against domestic violence were found to be significantly associated with police approach to domestic violence against women in Lagos State. The study concluded that the enactment of the protection against violence law was an appropriate measure to addressing domestic violence, still, the police need to be more proactive and unbiased in handling reported cases of domestic violence against women in the State.

ЖІНКА-ПОЛІЦЕЙСЬКИЙ В УКРАЇНСЬКОМУ СУСПІЛЬСТВІ

The article deals with the definition of a female police officer position in Ukrainian society. The position of women who serve in the bodies of the national police of Ukraine and the observance of female police officers’ rights have been investigated. It was clarified that equality is the foundation of a democratic society that strives for social justice and respect human rights. But, unfortunately, for some reasons, women are discriminated almost in all spheres of life. It was noted that our state, being at the stage of formation of a gender society and law in general, has the goal of the European choice, and many steps have already been done for achieving this goal. Ukraine has pledged to fulfill general international duties to ensure gender equality. Having chosen the European vector of development, our state has ratified a number of international documents, one of which was the order of the cabinet of ministers of Ukraine «on the approval of the national plan for the implementation of un security council resolution no. 1325 Women, Peace, Security for the period up to 2020». Аn resolution 1325 is dedicated to those states where armed conflicts take place, therefore this document is relevant for Ukraine. Thus, gender equality is one of the conditions for ensuring social development. For example, the United Nations provides gender-sensitive policing throughout the United Nations police work as an urgent need to address the differentiated security needs of women, men, girls and boys. A positive moment, testifying to the improvement in the field of gender equality, is the constant increase in the number of women in the ranks of the national police of Ukraine. We consider that this fact improves the image and the attitude of citizens towards the police, because women are more trusted than men in some issues. We state that achieving gender equality ensures preventing violence, protecting the rights of all people and the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to public life. All mentioned above aspects are impossible without women. Therefore, in the future we plan to study this issue in more detail.

ОСОБЕННОСТИ «Я-КОНЦЕПЦИИ» РОССИЙСКИХ ЖЕНЩИН-СОТРУДНИКОВ ПОЛИЦИИ

The article presents data from an empirical study of the features of the “I-concept” of Russian female police officers. An increasing number of women realise themselves in professions traditionally seen as those suitable principally for men, including working in the police. The authors consider the socio-psychological issue of transformation of gender-role behavior and related stereotypes, which contributes to a blurring of the boundaries between male and female in the structure of the psyche of the person, and naturally causes a transformation of the «I-concept» of female police officers. Differences in the cognitive component of the “I-concept” of female police officers and civil women were revealed: women working outside military forces are more likely to think of themselves in an aesthetic and family context, while female police officers imagine themselves in a social and professional context, which is more typical for the “I-concept” of male type. The proportion of female police officers using male-type behavior and strategies to identify themselves “I am a police officer” is significantly larger than the proportion of civilian women who prefer masculine patterns of behavior when identifying with their organization. The cognitive component of the “I-concept” of female police officers is characterized by the pronounced ambivalence in the family and socio-professional spheres. Given the priority of the family sphere in the “I-concept”, professional activity and its effectiveness become a secondary and tertiary concern, or the priority of the police service in the “I-concept” of female police officers assigns only the second and third role to the family sphere. Statistically significant differences were revealed in the structure of self-esteem, self-sympathy and self-acceptance of women of two groups, namely: female police officers are more self-confident, their self-respect is based on faith in themselves and their strength, independence, their reliance on their abilities, skills and capacities manifested against a backdrop of unstable auto-sympathy and a high need for social approval, prevailing focusing on social norms and success criteria. In contrast, civilian women have higher self-esteem, an active life position concerning themselves and society, trust and a positive attitude towards themselves, and awareness of their creative potential for a productive life and activity.

Produção de subjetividade de mulheres policiais de um batalhão da polícia militar do Paraná / Production of subjectivity of police women from a battle of the military police of Paraná

Neste artigo fazemos o delineamento e problematização da produção de subjetividade de mulheres policiais militares a partir de suas experiências no cotidiano de trabalho de um Batalhão da Polícia Militar do estado do Paraná (PMPR). Como sustentação teórica de nossas discussões, resgatamos alguns pressupostos de Michel Foucault, tais como subjetividade, disciplina e práticas discursivas. Para tal, a pesquisa contou com a participação de seis policiais atuantes, através de entrevistas. Desta forma, investigamos qual a relação das experiências como policiais dessas mulheres, com a forma com que as mesmas se produzem enquanto sujeitos em uma instituição tida historicamente como masculina. A partir da análise realizada, desenvolvemos uma categoria denominada “relações de cuidado com o outro”. Consideramos que características consideradas como masculinas perpassam diretamente as produções de subjetividades de mulheres policiais que têm suas vivências nesse contexto institucional atravessadas por discursos e práticas alicerçadas em um binarismo de gênero que sustenta um ideal de feminino, ao mesmo tempo, em que reforça um ideal de masculinidade referencial. Compreendemos que há a necessidade de um aprofundamento em algumas perspectivas no que diz respeito às pesquisas em Psicologia no campo da Polícia Militar, como as relações de gênero, por exemplo.

Women Police in Interwar Poland in the Light of Reports from Inspections Carried out by Stanisława Paleolog

Although the genesis of women police dates back to 1925, not much information on the activities of this formation has been preserved until today. It is known that it was established on the initiative of the Polish Committee for the Fight Against Trafficking in Women and Children and its main goal was to fight prostitution, to prevent women from being taken out of the country and exploited for work as prostitutes, and later also to take care of children. The formation was supervised by lt. Stanisława Filipina Paleolog. Her duties included controlling female police officers in terms of their task performance, as well as taking care of new candidates. In the article, on the basis of archival documents, the author analyses control reports and protocols drawn up during that period, on the basis of which it is possible to reconstruct, at least partially, the history of Polish female police officers in the late 1930s.

Use of employee assistance programs to manage stress in policing: the effects of perceived adequacy of assistance and opportunity for promotion

PurposeThis study investigates the relationship between police officer's willingness to use Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and their perceptions about stress and help-seeking in policing, considering the effect of gender and ethnicity in this association.Design/methodology/approachA survey of 431 Illinois police officers is used to measure officer's perceptions about help-seeking and organizational stressors. The conditional PROCESS modeling (Hayes, 2012) was employed to analyze the hypothesized mediation model. The ANOVA test was used to determent the effect of gender and ethnicity on organizational stressors in policing.FindingsFindings suggest police officer's willingness to use EAP is shaped by the perceived negative effect of stress on promotion through the mediator, confidence in their departments to receive adequate assistance, with noticeable gender and ethnic differences. The analysis demonstrated that female police officers feel stressed because of unfair promotional opportunities and poor relationships with supervisors. Female police officers are less willing to apply for the EAP services to mitigate stress than male police officers. The findings reveal that ethnicity is a significant predictor of the police officers' willingness to apply for EAP services to mitigate stress.Research limitations/implicationsThe current study is limited by its focus on only one police department located in the Illinois, USA. This may limit the generalizability of the results. The cross-sectional nature of data used to draw conclusions and variation in departments' characteristics and compositions could influence results.Practical implicationsThe research has practical implications for those who are interested to understand organizational stressors and perceptions on help-seeking in policing. This study provides suggestions for police administrators to make effort in creating more sensitive working environment to reduce stressors for female police officers and representatives of ethnic groups.Originality/valueThe research unveils the significance of officer's confidence in their departments in modifying their willingness to use EAP, revealing the effect of organizational stressors on confidence. The study adds empirical evidence to existing research on impact of gender and ethnicity on their willingness to use EAP.

“Little Red Sandals”: female police officers' lived experience of investigating sexual violence

PurposeAgainst a background of increasing workload and external criticism, the purpose of this paper is to expose the indelible memories impressed on female police officers dedicated to investigating allegations of rape and sexual violence.Design/methodology/approachParticipants (n = 15) were female police officers working in a specialist sexual offences investigation unit in a large English Metropolitan Police Force. A semi-structured interview was employed to elicit their experiences as an example of “extreme” police work. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to develop themes elucidating psychological and physical impacts on officers and their coping strategies.FindingsPersonal consequences were framed within the conceptualisation of secondary trauma. Emergent findings revealed profound and lasting vicarious traumatisation. Participants reported feelings of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, intrusive imagery, altered beliefs and cognitions as well as disrupted intimacy with partners. Coping adaptations included sensory shutdown, avoidance, dissociation and a reduction in victim care.Practical implicationsThe findings support the need to consider occupational interventions to address risk factors associated with caseload, tenure, personal experience of neglect (e.g. in childhood), and the permeability of work and family boundaries for such exceptional policing tasks.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to a nascent literature on stress in “extreme” police work. The theoretical contribution is the focus on the emotional and physical aspects of vicarious trauma, which have been less well understood than cognitive aspects. The practice implications stress the need for targeted support activities given the profound psychological consequences of prolonged exposure to distressing material.

“It’s classy because you can’t see things”: data from a project co-creating sexy images of young women

ABSTRACT Public and academic debates about sexualisation suggest that selfies taken by women of their own bodies, for display on Instagram, are sexualising and harming them. This paper reports on a “compare and contrast” project where a professional photographer (myself) took photographs of women who are sexy self-representers on Instagram. It is an examination of the aesthetics and practices of amateur and professional photography in this context, and draws attention to the role of class in making aesthetic judgements about women’s sexy selfies. I argue that these respective photographic regimes produce and affirm their own sets of values which reveal the hierarchical and prejudiced nature of visual (and wider) culture as it relates to representations of women’s bodies. I report on the verbal and visual languages used by participants and myself to make visible differing classed standards, through the concepts of what is “tasteful” and what is “vulgar”. Dominant discourses about sexualised self-representations of women that focus on risks to the selfie-taker mask prejudices regarding class. The privileging of professional or “high art” aesthetics over amateur, “everyday aesthetics” perpetuates a policing and marginalising of women’s bodies and sexualities and helps maintain long-standing ideals of female respectability and sexual decorum.

What to Wear for Whiteness?

Drawing on two ethnographic projects, one among Russian-speaking women engaged in commercial sex, the other among young Russian-speaking migrants in Finland, we interrogate how the construct of Eastern European female body is positioned in relation to the norm of (Western) Europeanness and white femininity. We show how Russian-speaking migrant women in Finland learn of their ‘Russianness’ and ‘Easternness’ through the circulation of the ‘whore’ stigma. We analyse these processes of racialisation and sexualisation in the context of the Finnish national project based on gender equality and women’s liberation norms. While normative Western Europeanness has recently been constructed through emancipated sexuality and the exclusion of non-Western Others as sexually repressed, the bodies of Russian-speaking women are perceived as sexually excessive and in need of toning down. Focusing on the (self-)policing of Russian-speaking migrant women’s bodies and the ways they navigate acceptable and unacceptable forms of gendered self-presentation, we demonstrate how these women are construed as not emancipated enough and hence not quite white. The article thereby contributes to understanding hierarchies of whiteness within the East/West dynamics of race as they pertain to gender and sexuality.

외국 경찰 남녀 체력시험 차이에 관한 연구

외국 경찰 남녀 체력시험 차이에 관한 연구

Reimaging the policing of gender violence: lessons from women’s police stations in Brasil and Argentina

The criminalisation of domestic violence during the 1970s and 1980s was lauded by feminists as a victory, as the state taking responsibility for the safety of women. The problem was that its regulation was delegated to a masculinist judicial system and its policing delegated to a militarised and masculinised police service that left victims disappointed, re-victimised or disbelieved. Our paper investigates how to re-imagine the policing of victims/survivors of gender-based violence from a women-centred perspective. Drawing on secondary and primary empirical research on women's police stations (WPS), that first emerged in Brasil in 1985 and Argentina in 1988, this paper investigates whether this model could offer an innovative remedy to the masculinised ill-equipped traditional models of policing of gender-based violence. Framed by southern theory our project reverses the notion that knowledge/policy transfer should flow from the Anglophone countries of the Global-North to the Global-South. Our project aimed to discover, firstly, how women's police stations – a unique invention of the Global-South, respond to and prevent gender-based violence and, secondly, what aspects could inform the development of new approaches to policing and prevention of gender-based violence elsewhere in the world. We conclude that this uniquely South American innovation might serve as an inspiration to Australia and elsewhere in the world struggling with the shadow pandemic of gender violence. Our paper draws on original empirical and historical research undertaken in Brasil, Argentina and Australia to offer new practical and conceptual insights into how to enhance the policing of gender-based violence.

Female Moscow Police Officers’ Emotional Reactions Features during Service in the COVID-19 Pandemic Emergency Conditions

The COVID-19 pandemic was an extreme situation that had a traumatic impact on psychosocial groups that performed their official duties in contact with the infected and sick, including in the gender aspect. Police officers were widely involved in anti-epidemic measures to protect order and citizens safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of the study is to identify the emotional reactions features in female police officers - the Moscow police employees, carrying serving as public order guards in the COVID-19 pandemic emergency conditions. It is shown that female police officers, in contrast to male police officers, in emergency conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, showed greater neuro-psychic adaptability to stressful situations, despite increased situational and personal anxiety. When serving in crowded places, they showed anxiety not about their own health, but because of fears about the relatives possibility infecting. It is shown that it is expedient to develop differentiated psychosocial support personality-oriented programs for police officers, taking into account gender characteristics during medical and biological emergencies.

Out of place: women’s experiences of policing in protest spaces

This article considers women’s experiences of policing at anti-fracking protests at Barton Moss, Salford, which took place between November 2013 and April 2014. Specifically, the article examines the spatial dynamics of the policing of women and argues that the policing of protest demands feminist analysis. Drawing upon narratives collected from women protesters at Barton Moss, which explore experiences of sexual violence perpetrated by police, we argue that the protest site needs to be considered as a space that facilitates violence against women. Understanding the specifics of the Barton Moss protest as an extended protest situation characterised by direct action protest and an intense and often violent police response, we suggest that women’s experiences of policing were a product of the spatial and temporal dynamics of the protest and policing operation. We consider the protest site as a productive, institutional space within which police violence takes a specifically gendered form enabling the control of those women deemed to be out of place. In turn, we argue that the women at Barton Moss were considered by the police to be transgressing the socio-geographical boundaries which establish the dominant cultural and social order and were thus responded to as disruptive and disorderly subjects.

Metabolic Syndrome in Female Police Officers and Female Office Workers: A Cross-Sectional Study in Occupations with Different Physical Activities.

IntroductionIncrease in the prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) has become a worldwide major health problem. So far, there are limited data about the impact of occupation types and the development of metabolic risks in females. This study aimed to compare the metabolic risk profiles and in two extremely different female occupational groups: police officers (PO) and office workers (OW).MethodsThe prospective study included a total number of 97 female subjects (37 POs and 60 OWs) from Germany. Anthropometric characteristics, metabolic risk parameters as well as laboratory parameters were taken. The diagnosis of MetS was based on the criteria of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF).ResultsFemale OWs presented a high prevalence of obesity, shown in average abdominal waist circumference (85.3 ± 14.5 cm) above the threshold of ≥80 cm recommended by the IDF to define abdominal obesity. Sixty percent of OWs versus 25% of POs had an abnormal abdominal waist circumference. Concerning other metabolic risk factors (HDL, triglycerides, body mass index, blood pressure) no significant differences were found, but a tendency toward a higher prevalence of abnormal values is presented in OWs than POs. MetS was detected in almost 8% of OWs as compared with 5% in POs (p = 0.705).ConclusionIn an international comparison, German female POs showed one of the lowest prevalence of MetS, whereas the prevalence in OWs is equal to results in other countries. In conclusion, especially the occupational type of female OWs presented elevated factors, that are associated with increased metabolic risk. There is a relevant need for further prospective studies with larger sample sizes in female workers to determine the influence between occupational type and metabolic system.