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What are the structural and cultural barriers to women's progression within the police service of England and Wales? What is the impact of an environment which has been labelled as institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic on women's inclusion within the organisation?
Progress so far
Before getting to the crux of the issue, it is important to understand where, in principle, progress has been made. Home Office police workforce statistics showed that, as of the end of March 2023, women made up 34.7 per cent of the total police population, more than doubling the 16.8 per cent in 2000. This progress looks on course to continue, with women making up 43.2 per cent of new recruits in the year ending March 2023. 14.5 per cent of women police officers worked part-time, with the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) being the first force in 2019 to allow officers to join the police part-time.
A more gender representative police workforce brings with it advantages for police legitimacy and public confidence in policing, not least because it has been suggested that women police officers use less force, make fewer discretionary arrests, are named in fewer complaints, and build better community relationships.
However, a tip-over of women breaking through minority status, enabling them to have a ‘greater impact on the character and style of policing’ has not been reached, but has rather been frustrated by a significant raft of structural and cultural obstacles. These challenges have undoubtedly had an impact on levels of trust and confidence in the police, both from the public but also among women within policing in terms of their trust in their own organisation.
The policing ‘family’?
Police officers joining the ‘policing family’ are often doing so to fulfil a long-held career ambition and frequently with a desire to work closely within a team to ‘make a difference’. However, as with all families there are often subconscious and tacit rules contributing to familial harmony, with the prerequisite focus upon ‘fitting in’. Failure to do so risks ostracism, being less well-protected by colleagues, or feeling compelled to leave.
‘Fitting in’ within policing requires officers to acknowledge and prove their cultural congruence, their competence and their ability to be a team-player, which all contribute towards what Linklater has termed their ‘inclusion capital’.
What follows is a brief consideration of some of these challenges to women's progression within the organisation, and a cultural analysis of the impact of this environment on women's inclusion within the organisation.
Barriers to women's progression
Women are proportionately underrepresented at sergeant and inspector levels and progress for women is slowing across the ranks. There are many reasons, including access to time, access to formal flexible working arrangements (FWA), and access to informal social networks which facilitate progress.
Within policing, the ideal worker is one who commits full-time to the organisation, with an uninterrupted career (and no adjustments to their roles), enabling them to provide evidence of ‘credibility, commitment and competency’. A masculinised and normalised culture of ‘extreme work’ incorporates working above standard hours – ‘available’ more readily to those who have fewer competing external commitments.
Working part-time restricts promotion and progression in a variety of ways owing to the cultural and structural norms of the full-time work model, the cultural aversion towards FWAs and the ability to access or be offered suitable opportunities for professional development. There were still only just over 6 per cent of officers working part-time (89 per cent of these are women), essentially unchanged from the figure of just under 6 per cent in 2011.
A third inhibiting factor in women's ability to progress within policing relates to their inability to access the informal social networks which facilitate their advancement. One such more informal and poorly evaluated method is via temporary promotion, which overwhelmingly is offered to men not women.
A heavy emphasis on its members’ conformity with organisational norms, leading to self-censorship and the potential for groupthink, has allowed certain behaviours to be normalised, suggesting perhaps a stagnation in the drive for a more culturally inclusive environment for women.
The impact of an exclusionary culture within policing
HMICFRS’ 2022 inspection of vetting, misconduct, and misogyny in the police service reported significant evidence of negative workplace attitudes and behaviours towards women officers and staff, including sexual assault, predatory behaviour and harassment. Women fear reporting such behaviours owing to concerns of the repercussions of doing so—in terms of both ostracisation and being labelled a ‘grass’—combined with concerns that nothing will be done. There is also a disproportionate number of women officers voluntarily resigning from the organisation in comparison to their male colleagues.
A focus for the future: fairness and compassion
To advance women's entry and progression, Brown and Silvestri argue for a relaxation of the traditional command and control structure of policing and an increasing emphasis on community policing principles as opposed to crime fighting narratives.
Women officers must be represented in all ranks of the service and across all policing roles. Fairness and transparency are therefore required across policing's promotion processes, in particular within the more informal arrangements. This requires that all forces monitor temporary promotions by gender and ensure that evidence of gender bias within these processes is addressed. Fairness and transparency must be central to decision-making regarding FWA and returning to work after parental leave.
In addition to fairness, the policing organisation needs to show compassion. Compassion was referred to as one of six characteristics of policing cultures from research considering the socialisation of new recruits to the service in England and Wales and has been highlighted as part of a new style of policing in other jurisdictions. There is already clear evidence of the links between compassion, inclusion and positive cultural change.
A less rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian organisational culture, with genuine attempts to hear competing and contradictory voices from across the rank structure, might begin to challenge these cultural practices. More compassionate styles of leadership would place a value on difference rather than conformity.
While there is no doubt that England and Wales can be considered as one of the most successful global policing organisations in terms of gender representation, policing must go beyond numerical gender representation as a marker of diversity.
