Women in Policing: Feminist Perspectives on Theory and Practice

Description

Women in Policing provides an insight into women's role within policing, their emergence, and development, offering a theoretical underpinning to explore this role as well as incorporating two empirical studies, one which reassesses the lived experiences of female officers, and one based on FOI requests to examine police officer disciplinary offences in three police force areas. The book begins by exploring some of the history of ideas in relation to ideas about women and their supposed nature. Cunningham shows how a variety of feminist ideas and critique are of vital importance in illuminating and critiquing the place of women within this field and provides a feminist lens with which to explore these themes critically. The book also examines the re-emergence of these ideas about women in current women and policing literature. Together, exploration of these sources using a feminist conceptual framework facilitates a new, rich analysis that is both reflective and reflexive, culminating in a novel snapshot of the place of women in policing in England. She argues that accepting both institutional racism and institutional misogyny are vital in approaching transformational change in policing practice. The book concludes with a discussion around how these findings can help with police confidence and legitimacy in the future. A fundamental examination of the ideas underpinning how women’s integration and continuation in policing has happened, where it is currently, and where it may go, Women in Policing will be of great interest to police practitioners and students as well as Criminology, Sociology, and Law and Policing scholars. Cover Endorsement Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of Tables Acknowledgements Introduction: Women in Policing: Their Sameness and Difference Introduction 1 Wollstonecraft, the ‘Nature of Woman’, and Women Entering the Police Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) The ‘Nature’ of Woman Sameness and Difference Dilemma Woman as Different and Weak Woman as Different and Dangerous Women’s Integration Into Policing Summary 2 Re-Emerging Arguments About the Nature of Woman, a Re-Examination of Twenty-Three Policewomen Data and a Review of ... Introduction Twenty-three Women Officers’ Data Revisited Sameness and Difference in Policing Re-Emerges Review of Policing in Victoria, Australia Wollstonecraft’s Dilemma Summary 3 Feminist Use of Freedom of Information Requests (FOI) New ‘Woman as Different’ Arguments Methodology Limitations of this FOI Study Service Police Area Service 2006–09 Service 2011 Service 2012 Service 2011–12 Constabulary Police Area Constabulary 2007–12 Constabulary 2008 Constabulary 2009 Constabulary 2010 Constabulary 2011 Force Police Area Force 2007 Force 2008 Force 2009 Findings and Discussion Summary 4 Conclusions and Summary Conclusion Bibliography Index