Women Police Officers in Hong Kong: Femininity and Policing in a Gendered Organization

Abstract

Police work is considered to be a masculine, male-dominated occupation, where studies show that women officers generally tend to play a complementary role. This paper examines how femininity has been articulated in the Hong Kong Police (HKP), which was first established in 1844 and recruited its first female officer in 1949. Early female recruits in the HKP were initially confined to supporting duties, and differential arrangements for male and female officers were commonplace. However, the turning point appeared to have come during the 1967 riots, when a number of female officers took up front-line positions for the first time. After that female officers began to receive training in public order policing, carry firearms, and are today regularly deployed to the front line. Does this development indicate an increasingly inclusive and gender-neutral HKP? Through analysis of documentary and archival materials and in-depth interviews with 13 female police officers who variously served between the 1950s and the present, and using the gendered organization perspective as our framework, we examine the perceived qualities of femininity associated with female officers in the HKP, and discuss whether the changing roles of female officers indicate a more inclusive and gender-neutral police force.

Keywords:

• Policewomen
• Hong Kong Police
• gender and organization
• femininity
• women and policing

About the Authors

Annie H. N. Chan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Her research interests include gender, sexuality and intimacy. She has published in many journals, including International Sociology, Sociological Research Online, Gender, Place and Culture, Sexualities, and Postcolonial Studies.

Lawrence K. K. Ho researches public policy, criminal justice, policing and public order management. He is a Lecturer at the Department of Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, and an Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Criminology, The University of Hong Kong. He got his MPhil in Politics and PhD in Sociology from the University of Hong Kong. He has worked for political parties and tertiary institutions as a policy researcher since graduation. He taught politics and sociology at the University of Macau from 2006 to 2008 and in the Department of Political Science at Lingnan University from 2009 to 2012. He is currently engaged in several research projects on Hong Kong policing and comparative policing practices, including the transformation of Hong Kong policing, the policewomen in Hong Kong, and policing in Macau. His recent books include Hong Kong Police: Witnessing History and the Life of Law Enforcement (co-authored with Y. K. Chu, 2011, Joint Publishing, Hong Kong, in Chinese), and Policing Hong Kong 1842–1970, Insiders' Stories (co-authored with Y. K. Chu, 2012, City University of Hong Kong Press, Hong Kong).

Notes

1 For example, in 1963, the pay scale of female officers was different from the male officers. In general, female officers could only get 3/4 monthly salaries of their male cohorts at the same rank and seniority. Also they had their independent training squad in the Police Training School, and the contents of their training was mainly concentrated on the execution of “Protection of Women and Juvenile Ordinance”, like the handling of abandoned babies and juvenile crimes, etc. See Offbeat, no. 10 (1973).

2 Hegemonic masculinity refers to dominant forms of masculinity (Connell, 1987).

3 Kimmy Koh joined the police force as sub-inspector in 1949. She was Malaysian Chinese and proficient in Chinese, English, Malay, Japanese and several Chinese dialects. In her service with the Hong Kong Police, she had been an interpreter, a detective involved in anti-crime operations and an instructor of the first batch of female police recruits in 1951. After serving in the Force for 12 years, she retired in 1962 (Offbeat, no. 699 (2004); see also a featured interview published in Singpao Daily News, 28 October 2002).

4 Several policewomen who joined the police force in 1960s recalled that whenever there were job fairs held in police stations, there were usually only 40–50 female candidates and around 10% of them would be admitted to the second round. Their success rate seemed far higher than that of male applicants.

5 See Calderwood (1974). See also Remmington (1983) and Darien (2002) on the resistance experienced by the New York City Police Department and the Atlanta Bureau of Police Services.

6 The average income of female factory workers was about $100/month in the early 1960s. The $180 monthly salary for a woman police constable was extremely attractive to young women then.

7 “Women officers are capable of doing a good job on the front line. Perhaps, their feminine touch, patience, sensitivity, communication skills and attentiveness are advantages over male officers when dealing with general citizens in situations like crowd management operations. These attributes can help ease tension at the scene, or even stave off a highly charged situation.” (Offbeat, no. 824 (July 2008)).