Massey Documents by Type

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/294

Browse

Filters

1996 - 199912010 - 20192

Settings

Has files: YesSubject: search.filters.subject.Policewomen

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    How policewomen's experiences of 'male construct' interact with sustainability of career development and promotion practices : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Mace, Stephanie Jane
    Women in today’s New Zealand Police organisation work across almost all roles and ranks, including 14 percent representation at commissioned and non-commissioned officer level. Disparities relating to women and men’s access to senior and high-level roles and workgroups continue to challenge police, despite new policy and performance initiatives for cultural reform. Understanding how policewomen’s experiences of police as a gendered organisation interact with sustainability of career development and promotion practices exposes the rules of formation that permit the conditions and outcomes of structural processes and practices that engender women in police as they negotiate their career progression strategies. 28 policewomen at commissioned and non-commissioned officer ranks were interviewed in a semi-structured conversational style about their experiences. A Foucauldian discourse analysis was applied, attending to the gendered social power relations that define and delimit social practice and the governance of women, both within and outside the workplace. The analysis showed that dominant heteronormative discourses regulate policewomen’s practices of gender coherence within a hegemonic socio-cultural discourse of masculinist rationalisation that differentiates male / female, masculine /feminine as contingent subject positions and investments in compliance and/or resistance to social institutions of work and family. Furthermore, women were positioned within and through discourse as neoliberal active gendering agents whose subjection to, and mastery of, masculinist ideals for leadership shape career progression as the strategic navigation of work and family commitments in accordance with a duplicitous and inegalitarian system. Alternate realities were also presented as reproducing and re-producing masculine values and the gender order for progression in the police hierarchy. This research contributes to the paucity of scholarship attending to the career progression experiences of senior-ranking policewomen in a gendered organisation that function to reproduce dominant discourses as social power relations that intervene in the practices of women and men in police. It may also provide understanding for what may be required to transform and/or vanquish relations of power in order to effect meaningful long-term organisational transformation.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Women policing : a contemporary study of women's experiences in the Royal Thai Police : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Women's Studies at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2014) Siriwato, Sasiphattra
    In line with international trends, in Thailand there are significantly fewer women than men who work at the senior level in public service and law enforcement occupations, especially in the police and armed forces. Utilizing the Royal Thai Police (RTP) as a case study, this research aims to identify the opportunities and barriers for promotion that impact women in the RTP and to analyze why few women work at the senior level for both police and administration or office-based work. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather information on women’s experiences. Thirty-seven intended participants were interviewed. Thirty-four participants are female police officers who work either in the Technical Support Unit or in the Field Operation Unit and another three participants are significant public authority figures who work with the RTP. Although many participants reported that they feel they have been ‘accepted’ in the RTP as police officers, there is evidence that they have not been fully accepted in the workplace. ‘Acceptance in the workplace’ has varied meanings according to which section of the organization those female police officers work within. This research shows that organizational and cultural barriers still exist that limit opportunities for promotion. Theoretical frameworks provided by Butler and Foucault help to provide tools for understanding why this might be the case in this and other case studies. One difficulty that emerged from the research is that having insider status as a researcher in relation to gendered cultural norms has impacted on the level of separation from critical analysis of the issues being studied, because the researcher is the product of these same gendered cultural norms.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Care and control : exploring the gendering of emotion management tasks among uniformed police : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Sociology
    (Massey University, 1996) Adams, Diana Margaret
    This study of uniformed police constables highlights the emotion management tasks undertaken as part of the caring and controlling interventions of 'front line' police. In particular, it considers the ways in which the integration of women into patrol work has coincided with a more newly developed emphasis on the caring and responsive veneer of the police organisation. This latter endeavour has been most significant with respect to changing police work styles and practices in responding to incidents of domestic violence and it is in these areas that the convergence of these two changes is most apparent. The result has been the re-emergence of a systematically gendered specialisation of policing tasks. Under this informal system of task segregation, female constables have come to assume responsibility for modern 'care' provision whilst male constables maintain their historic responsibility for 'control'. This pattern of differential deployment significantly contravenes an espoused commitment to equality of opportunity and treatment at the same time as its persistence works to compromise much championed commitments to re-orientating police work styles and police responses to the public. The findings of this study suggest that the police organisation may be able to improve both the quality of work life of its incumbents and the way in which it delivers critical services to the public by more seriously embracing policies of equal employment opportunity.