A new study reiterates more women in
the police force would make it more representative, and raise the quality of
policing.
A recent study by the Commonwealth
Human Rights Initiative has drawn attention to an imbalance:
· Women
make up nearly half of India’s population, but only a little over six per cent of the
police force in the country.
· Twelve
states have an affirmative action programme in place to ensure that at least 30
per cent of the personnel are women (as per the guideline from Central Govt.).
· Yet,
only in
three states has the percentage moved into double digits — Tamil Nadu at 12.42 per cent,
Himachal Pradesh at 11 per cent and Maharashtra at 10.48 per cent.
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·
Chandigarh
with 14.16 per cent female presence in the force is the leader among Union
territories, while Assam, with less than one per cent, provides the worst
example.
·
Less than 1% of policewomen in India occupy senior ranks and
almost 90% of them serve as constables.
·
One state even has guidelines that say women must not be
deployed into roles usually held by male officers.
·
Outnumbered by men, policewomen often tend to internalize and
accept the bias against them.
This situation needs to change to
ensure gender parity in a crucial public service and to raise the quality of
policing itself. The police force has remained a male preserve because the
authorities, despite making noises to the contrary, have sought to keep it that
way.
Though the Constitution envisages India
as a liberal democracy, policing has not shaken off its feudal and colonial
legacies.
CHRI found that a
pervasive view of policing as a job for men was an impediment to policewomen at
every stage of their careers. It said authorities often fail to understand the
contribution women can make to effective law enforcement.
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How will
presence of WOMEN contribute?
·
The
presence of women could have softened and humanised the hard and often crude image of
the police that has been
perpetuated through popular culture.
·
Globally,
there has been a rethink on the form and substance of policing and the view
that the police force should reflect the composition of the society it serves
has gained ground.
·
Evidence
suggests that the presence of women in the force leads to a marked reduction in
police brutality, including custodial crimes, improves the police-public
interface and enables better reporting of crimes against women.
·
However,
affirmative action alone is unlikely to help raise women’s presence in the
police.
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What should be the way forward ?
·
As the
study by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative also points out, their role
in the force itself should be reconceptualised and necessary changes brought in
in recruitment, retention and promotion policies as well as service
conditions to make policing an attractive career option for women.
·
Mindsets
and attitudes within the force will also need to change.
·
Women officers are typically relegated to desk jobs or tasks
that shield them from frontline policing. Such assignments away from core
law-enforcement duties are an impediment to career advancement. Gender segregation should be actively
discouraged and women personnel must be made part of all aspects of policing,
including crime investigation.
·
Police forces should bring out the virtues of women and not
push them to be ‘poor copies’ of male police.
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Other issues !
Separate cadres :
Many state police forces continue to have
separate cadres for men and women at state-level entry points, which means that
very few vacancies for a particular rank are reserved for women, which affects
their career growth upwards, as greater number of seniority and promotion lists
are apportioned to male officers.
(A common cadre for recruitment is an
urgent policy change that is being suggested by those working for a more gender
equal police reforms. A novel approach by the Meghalaya Police saw a
Transparent Recruitment Process in 2012 based on computerized tests in a completely
gender neutral manner, which saw large number of women apply. In the latest
recruitment drive, half of those in the Sub-inspector rank were women.)
All-women police
stations :
Many states in India operate all-women police
stations, staffed exclusively by policewomen to tackle crimes against women and
encourage women to report crimes in an environment free of male-bias.
(The
concept doesn’t work well; it segregates women into a separate group. Kerala,
which has four women-only police stations, has seen bigger benefits from making
sure five female officers are assigned to each of Kerala’s 475 police stations.
From traffic control to community policing, interviewing suspects and
registering complaints, women bring in better techniques !!! )
Promotion and Retention:
· While largely the
police departments’ promotions systems are mired in internal problems, the
prevalence of the separate cadre system
for men and women at the subordinate ranks stunts their career growth.
· As only a select
number of posts at the Head Constable, Sub-Inspector and Inspector ranks are
assigned to women police, there are fewer opportunities for promotion.
· A male constable can
typically rise up to the rank of Sub-Inspector, very few women constables get
promoted.
· As a result, women are
concentrated only in the constable and head constable positions. Out of a total
396 DGP/Spl/DG/ADGP posts, a mere 16 are women; only 20 out of 607 DIGs; and 1,234
out of 31,754 Inspectors.
Working Hours:
- Working hours are also non-conducive for women police officers. A recent study sponsored by the BPRD reveals that “90 % of police station staff, across states and across police station types, presently works for more than eight hours a day”.
- Women were often found to be working more than 12 hours a day and often in postings outside their home towns which made their dual roles within home and work very difficult. This was particularly acute in posts that handled women’s help desks and also all women’s police stations.
Inadequate Facilities:
One of the gravest limiting factors and a gross human rights violation
is the lack of even basic facilities like toilets for women in the police
stations. This problem is even worse for Women Traffic Police. Worse is the
discrimination of basic facilities for the IPS and state cadre officers. The
new police headquarters building in Rajasthan has women’s toilets only for the
use of IPS cadre officers. Under the Modernization of State Police Force
Scheme, the Government of India issued guidelines in February 2013, asking
state governments to provide for toilets, crèches, and restrooms for women
police personnel.
Similar discrimination between cadres
is also seen in maternity policies. While IPS officers are entitled to 180 days
maternity leave and up to 2 years of childcare leave, state cadres get leave
ranging from 135-180 days across states. Recently Haryana and Bihar introduced
two year child care leave ( Rajasthan and Jharkhand do not), but in practice it
is very difficult to avail.
Child care facilities are practically
non-existent for women in police forces. The Parliamentary Committee observed
that “for the fiscal year 2012-13, funds to the tune of Rs. 1.22 crore were
released for this purpose, whereas, utilization was to the tune of Rs. 59 lakh
only
Workplace Harassment:
Negative attitudes are severely compounded by prevailing
culture of sexual harassment at the workplace, though a large part of it goes
under reported for lack of complaint mechanisms or insufficient knowledge of
the women personnel. In focus group interviews conducted by CHRI, 7.5% of
respondents in Kerala and Haryana, talked about sexual harassment they faced.
Male attitudes within Policing:
The culture within the police services is
inherently patriarchal leading to negative stereotyping of women police
officers and entrenched gender bias. This forces women to work extra hard to
dispel those notions. A recent study conducted in Tamil Nadu corroborated this
notion that women are perceived negatively by male police officers and a wider
notion that police work is performed more efficiently by men
Policy Reform Measures so far:
This skewed gender ratio in the police
force has not gone unnoticed.
· Representation of women was addressed
for the first time in the 2006 Model Police Act
which called for “adequate gender representation in the composition of the
police service” and required “each police station to have a Women and Child Protection Desk
staffed, as far as possible, by women police personnel, to record complaints of
crimes against women and children and to deal with the tasks relating to
administration of special legislations relating to women and children”.
·
A Second
Committee constituted in 2013, looks at the issue of diversity and gender
equality in police forces. New laws relating to sexual crimes against children
and women were passed in 2012 and 2013 respectively, giving exclusive functions
to women police in the registration of complaints and recording of victim
statements.
· The Parliamentary Committee on the
empowerment of Women has
taken up the issue of women in policing in 2012 and 2013 and made several
significant observations and recommendations.
The National Conference for women in police has repeatedly stressed the
need for increased representation of women and recommended several measures
including 33% reservation,
special recruitment drives, a common cadre for men and women, and better
facilities for women
· The Ministry of Home Affairs has
advised state governments repeatedly to recruit at at least 33% women to the
police force. Many states have a reservation policy for women ranging from 15%
(Uttarakhand) to 35% (Telangana). These states are: Maharashtra, Rajasthan,
Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bihar, Sikkim, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Tripura,
Telangana, and Uttarakhand. Even then, these targets have not been met and the
states which had implemented reservations long ago only have about 12% women.
Maharashtra has had a reservation policy (30%) in place since 1971, but women
police are barely pushing 10% of the force. Tamil Nadu has attained 12% after
26 years; Rajasthan only 7% in the same period; and Odisha is not even at 10%
after 23 years.
Some positive figures !!
§ Meghalaya has almost doubled its numbers of female police officers
from 174 in 2008 to 329 in 2014, which is overall an increase of 1%.
§ Haryana has doubled its numbers from 1358 in 2008 to 2734 in 2014.
This amounts to a three times increase in percentage terms from 2.7% to 6.5% in
2014. In 2011-12, Haryana added an additional 1000 additional officers.
§ Jharkhand has seen an increase from 1701 to 2906, particularly
between 2013-14, when it added an additional 1000 officers which increased the
percentage from 3.4% to 5.15%.
§ Kerala has been pretty consistent over those years with no
significant increase or decrease. Currently there are 3067 women, constituting
6.42% of the force.
§ Rajasthan has seen a three times increase in women police officers
from 2,662 in 2008 to 6,568 in 2014. In percentage terms, it has almost doubled
from 4% to 7.11%
Moral of the Story !!
Clearly, much more needs to be done to
bring down the structural barriers and make women an integral part of police
force through more evolved policy measures and their effective implementation
and monitoring, including police reforms. Gender equality is a constitutionally
enshrined right and it is time that the right is fully realized.