Gendering Transnational Policing: Experiences of Australian Women in International Policing Operations

Abstract

This article explores the issues encountered by Australian women police officers on international peace keeping and capacity-building deployments in Timor-Leste, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. The discussion draws upon the literature on transnational policing as well as on women's participation in domestic police forces. The women police interviewed for this research encountered challenges working with colleagues from both the host nation and other contributing forces. The most commonly reported difficulties, however, stemmed from the behaviour of some of their Australian colleagues. These experiences point to the risk that a small number of male Australian police are reverting to a macho culture on international missions. The symbolic as well as practical implications of any kind of ‘gender reversion’ are likely to be significant.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This article forms part of the work emerging from the ‘Policing the Neighbourhood’ project, an Australian Research Council Linkage grant (LP0560643) supported by the Australian Federal Police. The article has benefited from frank and detailed feedback provided by members of the AFP's International Deployment Group, and by Mary Heath, Abby McLeod and the anonymous reviewers. Their assistance is gratefully acknowledged. The views presented here do not purport to reflect the official views of the AFP.

Notes

Rick Linden, David Last and Christopher Murphy, ‘The Role of Civilian Police in Peacekeeping’, in Andrew Goldsmith and James Sheptycki (eds), Crafting Transnational Policing: Police Capacity-Building and Global Policing Reform, Oxford: Hart, 2007, p.151; David H. Bayley, Democratizing the Police Abroad: What to Do and How to Do It, Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, 2001, p.6; UN, Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (Brahimi Report), 2000, p.20.

See Tim Prenzler and Hennessey Hayes, ‘Measuring Progress in Gender Equity in Australian Policing’, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, Vol.12, No.1, 2000, pp.20–38; John T. Krimmel and Paula E. Gormley, ‘Tokenism and Job Satisfaction for Policewomen’, American Journal of Criminal Justice, Vol.28, No.1, 2003, pp.73–88.

See, e.g., Janet B.L. Chan, Chris Devery and Sally Doran, Fair Cop: Learning the Art of Policing, Toronto: University of Toronto, 2003; Jennifer Brown and Frances Heidensohn, Gender and Policing: Comparative Perspectives, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000; Tim Prenzler, ‘Women in Australian Policing: An Historical Overview’, Journal of Australian Studies, Vol.42, 1994, pp.78–88.

Exceptions include UNIFEM, Policy Briefing Paper: Gender Sensitive Police Reform in Post Conflict Societies, United Nations Development Programme, NewYork, 2007, p.3.

DPKO, ‘Contributors to United Nations Peacekeeping Operations as of 31 October 2008’ (at: www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/contributors/2008/oct08_1.pdf); UNIFEM (see n.4 above).

UNIFEM (see n.4 above) p.9.

DPKO (see n.5 above).

UNIFEM (see n.4 above), p.8.

DPKO, Gender Resource Package for Peacekeeping Operations, Peacekeeping Best Practices Unit, New York, 2004, p.146.

Personal communication from Tony Murney, AFP, International Deployment Group, 26 Aug. 2008.

Fifteen of the policewomen were from the AFP and five from Australian state or territory police services. All had extensive police experience, three-quarters having served as police for 10–25 years. They were interviewed in 2005–07, mainly but not all in Australia.

Australia has nine police services: each of the eight states and territories has its own, in addition to the federal police service (AFP). Gender ratios differ in each service – for example the AFP has a significantly higher proportion of women than some state services, although it should be noted that the AFP makes no distinction between sworn and unsworn members in such counts (as is the practice in some other police services). International deployment takes place through the AFP, and state police may be seconded to the AFP for this purpose.

David Bayley (see n.1 above, p.76) notes that ‘the people who do [police] assistance work, both at home and abroad, know a great deal about what works and what doesn't, but this knowledge isn't being captured’. An interview-based research method was adopted in this research in order to capture some of this knowledge. Narratives of the kind discussed here ‘express emotions, thoughts and interpretations’ and ‘communicate the narrator's point of view, including why the narrative is worth telling in the first place’. Susan Chase, ‘Narrative Inquiry: Multiple Lenses, Approaches, Voices’, in Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (eds), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, London: Sage, 2005, p.656. We aim not to establish the extent to which these narratives fit with ‘reality’ or reflect official policy applying to international operations, but rather to bring to light themes emerging from a close reading of the personal accounts that might bear usefully upon future planning and conduct of police peace operations.

See Abby McLeod and Sinclair Dinnen, ‘Police Building in the Southwest Pacific – New Directions in Australian Regional Policing’, in Andrew Goldsmith and James Sheptycki (eds), Crafting Transnational Policing: Police Capacity-Building and Global Policing Reform, Oxford: Hart, 2007, pp.295–328.

See Marisa Silvestri, Women in Charge: Policing, Gender and Leadership, Cullompton: Willan, 2003, p.31; Susan Ehrlich Martin and Nancy C. Jurik, Doing Justice, Doing Gender: Women in Legal and Criminal Justice Occupations, 2nd edn, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007, p.68.

James W. Messerschmidt, Masculinities and Crime: Critique and Reconceptualization of Theory, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993, p.182; Chan et al. (see n.3 above), p.277.

Martin and Jurik (see n.15 above), p.45.

Chan et al. (see n.3 above).

Tsjeard Bouta, Georg Frerks and Ian Bannon, Gender, Conflict and Development, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005, p.82.

Linden et al. (see n.1 above), p.151.

Elisabeth Rehn and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, ‘Women, War and Peace: The Independent Experts’ Assessment of the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women's Role in Peace-Building, New York: UNIFEM, 2002.

Judith Hicks Stiehm, ‘United Nations Peacekeeping: Men's and Women's Work’, in Mary K Meyer and Elisabeth Prugl (eds), Gender Politics in Global Governance, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, pp.41–57.

Louise Olsson, ‘Equal Peace: United Nations Peace Operations and the Power-Relations between Men and Women in Timor-Leste’, Department of Peace and Conflict Research Report Series, University of Uppsala, 2007, p.161.

Gerard De Groot, ‘A Few Good Women: Gender Stereotypes, the Military and Peacekeeping’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.8, No.2, 2001, pp.23–38; Stiehm (see n.22 above), p.41.

Dyan Mazurana, ‘Do Women Matter in Peacekeeping? Women in Police, Military and Civilian Peacekeeping’, Canadian Woman Studies, Vol.22, No.2, 2002, pp.64–71.

DPKO 2004 (see n.9 above); UNIFEM (see n.4 above).

Heidi Hudson, ‘Peacekeeping Trends and Their Gender Implications for Regional Peacekeeping Forces in Africa: Progress and Challenges’, in Dyan Mazurana, Angela Raven-Roberts and Jane Parpart (eds), Gender, Conflict, and Peacekeeping, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, p.112.

Johanna Valenius, ‘A Few Kind Women: Gender Essentialism and Nordic Peacekeeping Operations’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.14, No.4, 2007, pp.510–23.

De Groot (see n.24 above), p.22.

UN, Security Council SC/9364, media release, Department of Public Information, 2008.

In relation to Timor-Leste see Michelle Hynes, Jeanne Ward, Kathryn Robertson and Chadd Crouse, ‘A Determination of the Prevalence of Gender-Based Violence among Conflict-Affected Populations in East Timor’, Disasters, Vol.28, No.3, 2004, pp.294–321; Sherrill Whittington, ‘Gender and Peacekeeping: The United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor’, Signs, Vol.28, No.4, 2003, pp.1283–8; Juani O'Reilly, ‘Plural Policing of Gender Based Violence: The Case of Timor Leste’, paper presented at Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology Conference, Adelaide, 23–26 September, 2007.

Mona Girgis, ‘The Capacity-Building Paradox: Using Friendship to Build Capacity in the South’, Development in Practice, Vol.17, No.3, 2007, pp.353–66.

DPKO (see n.9 above), p.148.

Martin and Jurik (see n.15 above), p.90.

Ibid., p.45; Laura L. Miller, ‘Not Just Weapons of the Weak: Gender Harassment as a Form of Protest for Army Men’, Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol.60, No.1, 1997, pp.32–51.

Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994, p. 211.

Hudson (see n.27 above), p.112.

Mazurana (see n.25 above), p.65.

For more detailed discussion of these arrangements see McLeod and Dinnen (n.14 above); Andrew Goldsmith and Sinclair Dinnen, ‘Transnational Police Building: Critical Lessons from Timor Leste and Solomon Islands’, Third World Quarterly, Vol.28, No.6, 2007, pp.1091–109.

See Andrew Goldsmith and Vandra Harris, ‘Out of Step: Multilateral Police Missions, Culture and Nation-Building in Timor-Leste’, Conflict, Security and Development, Vol.9, No.2, 2009, pp.189–211.

See Andrew Goldsmith, ‘“It Wasn't Like Normal Policing”: Voices of Australian Police Peace-Keepers in Operation Serene, Timor-Leste 2006’, Policing and Society, Vol.19, No.2, 2009, pp.119–33.

Frances Heidensohn, ‘“We Can Handle It out Here”. Women Officers in Britain and the USA and the Policing of Public Order’, Policing and Society, Vol.4, No.4, 1994, 293–304.

See Goldsmith (n.41 above).

Martin and Jurik (see n.15 above), p.78.

See Silvestri (see n.155 above), p.34.

Martin and Jurik (see n.15 above), p.69.

Silvestri (see n.15 above) p.38.

Jennifer L. Berdahl, ‘Harassment Based on Sex: Protecting Social Status in the Context of Gender Hierarchy’, Academy of Management Review, Vol.32, No.2, 2007, 641–58, p.647; see also Krimmel and Gormley (see n.2 above), p.77.

See Krimmel and Gormley (see n.2 above); Jennifer Brown, ‘European Policewomen: A Comparative Research Perspective’, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, Vol.25, 1997, pp.1–19; Tim Prenzler, ‘Sex Discrimination’, in Prenzler and Janet Ransley (eds), Police Reform: Building Integrity, Sydney: Hawkins Press, 2002; Heidensohn (see n.42 above), p.301.

Martin and Jurik (see n.15 above), p.62.

Much of the AFP's domestic focus is federal law enforcement, including serious crime and counter-terrorism investigations. State and territory police, while having investigative responsibilities, are also engaged in regular preventive policing on a significant scale.

Silvestri (see n.15 above), p.41.

This is supported by Martin and Jurik (see n.15 above), p.67, and Prenzler (see n.3 above).

Berdahl (see n.48 above).

Tracy Fitzsimmons, ‘The Postconflict Postscript: Gender and Policing in Peace Operations’, in Dyan Mazurana, Angela Raven-Roberts and Jane Parpart (eds), Gender, Conflict, and Peacekeeping, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, p.193.

See Robert Hill's statements in media release (see n.30 above); UNIFEM (see n.4 above) p.9.