For professionalism and capacity building of any police organisation, equal opportunities should be given to men and women in the services, B Sandhya IPS has said.
Horizontal and lateral representation of women as a critical mass in the police organisation is a must for professionalism in the Police Department as well as for equal accessibility of Criminal Justice System to all sections of society, Sandhya said in her representation submitted in the fifth National Conference of Women in Police, being organised by the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) and Kerala Police, in Thrissur.
“For this, the government should integrate men and women fully, wherever it is not yet done. Equal opportunities for women to handle diversified fields are extremely important in capacity building.
“The government has to arrange continuous training and development programmes for women police, including regional, national and international programmes aimed at capacity building,” she said.
“Overprotection, marginalisation and limited opening for women are detrimental to the professional growth of individuals and organisations. This is detrimental to society that the organisation serves too,” Sandhya said. The National and Regional Conferences of Women in Police (NCWP) should press upon police services to aim at fostering public recognition and understanding the importance of women’s role in law enforcement. Financial support to those police services recruiting women and giving them continuous training to serve society better are equally important, she said.
The National and Regional Conferences of Women in Police may suggest increasing the number of women at all ranks as a strategy to improve policing responses to community, to reduce brutality and strengthen community policing projects.
But, its main objective should be to educate policymakers, the media and the public about the advantages of increasing the representation of women in policing, she added.