First female head of Police reps slams culture in UK

Stheno

Woman police representative slams macho, male, white, middle aged approach

What do you think? I read this, and honestly thought that while the figures are bad it's probably a quantum leap from 10-15 years ago, so there is some progress.

You can't take an institution/company that has been overwhelmingly white and male for decades and expect sudden transformational change in a matter of years.

I can see the value in her highlighting this, but having spent my entire professional life in IT, and seen the same to an extent, but seen changes compared to fifteen years ago, I wonder if her seeking publicity will achieve change?

And interestingly considering the marriage ban ended in 1973 and we have some very senior policewomen, what's the difference between here and the UK?

menapyan

I read your post in the feedback thread about starting a subject which you felt might be more interesting and while to you this might be a topic close to your heart, does it not basically boil down to equality and womens rights at the end of the day? I can't see where else this thread will go really and I'm sure equality has been done to death here a million times before. Maybe from different and or personal experiences of it, where it is relative or where others can relate.

With regard to the issue at hand, fair play to her. She has an integral role in a very male dominated work force, as the first female head of the association she will probably fuel some publicity initially especially by newsources which like to sensationalise for the sake of it. Other than that I'd safely say not very many will be bothered if she is male or female either way and if she can do a good job at the end of the day that will be her legacy.


(from a male perspective)

Morag

There comes a point where women have the right but cultural mores and societal attitudes can stop use from exercising those rights. As the saying goes it's hard to be what you can't see, looking at numbers is a start, it created an awareness.

meeeeh

Is there any non totalitarian police force in Europe that has history of such bad practices as is the one in UK. I think that the race is even more important factor. For too long seems to be the police in Uk old boys club and they do whatever they feel like it. But I don't know if that isn't a consequence of fairly rigid and segregated society ffttanyway. In other words I don't believe that just upping the quotas will make that much of a difference.

coffee_cake

I was going to say how I don't like minority quotas - they keep talking about ethnic minorities - but actually for a police force it would be pretty important for people. I don't know about slamming it like she did but it does need to be brought up. Only thing is though how many female police are there at all? Are there many? I suppose they can't promote them if they are not there from a large enough pool that they're clearly good enough

mariaalice

Maybe woman have looked at the management in the police and though,..na I am not interested in joining their old boys club, or maybe she thought I am not prepared for the long hours and the long slog to get there I'd rather enjoy my free time, or she might have though there is no way to make this work with family life.

Having quotas will not change any of the above, the culture of the organisation is what this is about in other words the culture of the organisation has to change.

A small example is something in the croke park agreement, from now on anyone on assistant principle grade or above will not be allowed job share, that sort of rule does put woman off applying for promotion and if women do not apply for promotion they can not be in Senior management.

Woodward

She slams 'performance culture' and 'target driven' management! Yea she sure sounds like a great leader. She seems to be more worried about ticking boxes and filling quotas than getting actual work done

clairefontaine

Once you get into minority quotas you are onto a bottomless pit. First it's women, then it's blacks, then it's travellers, then its Muslims,than it's the disabled, and so on and so on and so on.

IvyTheTerrible

Woodward wrote: »

She slams 'performance culture' and 'target driven' management! Yea she sure sounds like a great leader. She seems to be more worried about ticking boxes and filling quotas than getting actual work done

Target driven can be dangerous in terms of policing - you get police encouraging people not to report "petty" crimes because if it's unsolved it looks bad in terms of targets. You also get people arrested for simple things or traffic fines given for silly things just to reach targets.

Interesting article.

Morag

clairefontaine wrote: »

Once you get into minority quotas you are onto a bottomless pit. First it's women, then it's blacks, then it's travellers, then its Muslims,than it's the disabled, and so on and so on and so on.

We removed the gendered height restrictions here to facilitate members of the irish asain community becoming members of the Garda. Community policing works best when people can see member of their community/background in the Garda and such recruits bring with them language skills and cultural awareness and awareness of subtleties which makes getting information and the pressing of chargers easier.

darklighter

Morag wrote: »

We removed the gendered height restrictions here to facilitate members of the irish asain community becoming members of the Garda. Community policing works best when people can see member of their community/background in the Garda and such recruits bring with them language skills and cultural awareness and awareness of subtleties which makes getting information and the pressing of chargers easier.

We did now, did we??? Please post a source to back up such a non-sensical post.

While the police (both here & in the UK) have come along way in the last 15 years or so in regard to treatment, both within & outside the respective forces, of women (& minorities), there is still a ways to go. So it can do no harm to highlight the issue.

Morag

The height restriction was 5'9" for men and 5'4" for women, it was abolished in 2001.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/abolish-garda-age-limit-says-td-157751.html

Scarinae

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

Target driven can be dangerous in terms of policing - you get police encouraging people not to report "petty" crimes because if it's unsolved it looks bad in terms of targets. You also get people arrested for simple things or traffic fines given for silly things just to reach targets.

This already happens, and not just for petty crimes. In several London boroughs, police officers encouraged some of those reporting rapes to retract their statements:

The Southwark Sapphire unit was under-performing and over-stretched, and officers of all ranks, often unfamiliar with sexual offence work, felt under pressure to improve performance and meet targets. Victims were questioned closely by a Detective Constable before they met an officer trained in dealing with sex crimes to ensure crimes were classified correctly.
The unit also adopted its own standard operating procedure designed to encourage officers to take retraction statements from victims in cases where it was thought they might later withdraw or not reach the standard for prosecution. By increasing the number of incidents that were then classified as ‘no crime’, sanction-detection rates improved and the performance statistics for the unit benefited.

In one particular case, a woman was pressured to drop a rape claim against a man, who later went on to murder his two children.

As for the original question in the OP, there obviously has been some progress but for whatever reason the change has been very slow… Is it that women and ethnic minorities are not going for the top jobs in the first place, or is it that they are going for the jobs and are being passed over in favour of more ‘traditional’ candidates?

strobe

Morag wrote: »

The height restriction was 5'9" for men and 5'4" for women, it was abolished in 2001.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/abolish-garda-age-limit-says-td-157751.html

I presume she meant a link to the 'to facilitate Asians' thing, not that the height limits were scraped...