Women and Policing: Contradictions Old and New (From Women, Policing, and Male Violence: International Perspectives, P 13-45, 1989, Jalna Hanmer, Jill Radford et al., eds. -- NCJ-127406)

• NCJ Number: 127408
• Author(s): J Radford
• Date Published: 1989
• Length: 33 pages
• Sale Source: Routledge
• Publication Type: Best Practice/State-of-the-Art Review
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This article uses case histories to document government and police resistance to women in the police force. It demonstrates how threatening the idea of women with authority was to the dominating class of men.

Abstract

Women's concern with men's violence was the central idea to an early call for women police. In the years immediately preceding World War I, a group of militant suffragettes who were involved in a campaign against men's violence engaged in a political campaign for police women. In most histories of the early police, the role played by women was hidden or deliberately obscured. The Women's Freedom League made the first feminist call for women police officers out of concern against men's violence. Their publications carried regular accounts of men's violence against women and children and was critical of the failure of the government and judiciary to act effectively against it. The Women's Police Service trained police women and in many towns worked with the police and the military. When it finally accepted a need for women police in 1918, the Metropolitan Police recruited both for leaders and members from the largely upper middle-class Voluntary Women's Patrols.