ABSTRACT
The recent history of women in the Tamil Nadu police is characterized by a series of bold experiments to meet the needs of the women officers and the society they serve. As in many other countries, women officers in Tamil Nadu were originally assigned a peripheral “token” role in policing, usually to assist male officers with clerical duties. This was the position until the 1970s when they were given a more direct role in dealing with women and children, either as victims or offenders. In the 1990s, however, the situation began to change because the police were being asked to take a more active role in assisting women victims of violence. An important barrier to taking this more active role was that women in traditional societies are reluctant to report their victimization to police (Human Rights Watch Report, 1998, Natarajan, 2006c). In particular:
They are hesitant to talk to a male police officer about their private problems.
They believe that male officers will not be sympathetic because there is a general tendency for men to support one another and male officers are also more likely to believe the man’s story.
They believe male officers do not understand women’s psychology and the suffering resulting from domestic violence.
They fear that male officers will take sexual advantage of them.
The solution adopted by the Tamil Nadu police was to establish the all women police units (AWPUs) on the grounds that a woman’s “gentle touch” (Heidensohn, 1992) was needed to undertake gender-specific police tasks. These units succeeded in improving the reporting of violence against women, but they also created the opportunity for women police to develop an important role of their own. When assigned to general police stations, women police were assisting male police officers in clerical duties rather than in “policing” functions. The AWPUs gave women officers the opportunity to learn a wide range of policing skills and improved their confidence in performing various police tasks. With the establishment of the AWPUs, they were able to demonstrate their competence (in Susan Martin’s phrase) as “policewomen.” For many of these women, escaping from a male-dominated environment provided the impetus for personal growth and cultivated a sense of professionalism. Working in the AWPUs meant that they were surrounded by supportive colleagues and it also freed them from sexual harassment at work. Indeed, they found that their relations with male officers and supervisors generally improved and their work was more likely to be appreciated. This was because the men disliked dealing with women’s problems and had little difficulty in conceding that women officers were more suited to this work.