THE future for women in policing isn\u2019t about being a \u201cbra-burning feminist\u201d, Surrey\u2019s first female chief constable said.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a session at the Police Federation conference to celebrate 100 years of women in policing, Lynne Owens praised the \u201cproud, passionate and determined women\u201d in the service but said she hoped to see a time when there was no need to talk about male or female policing separately.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cIt\u2019s important to remind ourselves why this matters. It\u2019s doesn\u2019t matter if I\u2019m some bra-burning feminist, it doesn\u2019t matter because of the numbers. What really matters is public service, which is why we all joined.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t about number counting or presenteeism. It\u2019s about proud, passionate and determined women putting themselves in a difficult job to represent the people of this country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis audience still has work to do. The measure of your success will be when you no longer need a reserve seat for women because they\u2019re equally represented.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope in 20 years we don\u2019t have to talk about female or male policing \u2013 that we have policing that represents society.\u201d<\/p>\n
CC Owens said the Police Federation\u2019s mark of success for equality for would be when there was no need for a reserve seat on joint branch boards.<\/p>\n
The role of women in policing has changed dramatically since Edith Smith became the first female constable with powers of arrest in 1915.<\/p>\n
Retired PC Pamela Collier described her first post in a women-only police station in Birmingham in 1966, where earrings and eye makeup were banned and female officers\u2019 hair had to be short.<\/p>\n
By 1972 she had transferred to CID, where she worked with men for the first time, before being seconded to the bomb squad.<\/p>\n
The service introduced equal pay for male and female officers in 1974 but Mrs Collier said she didn\u2019t think about equality.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cI never thought about equality. I was just happy doing the job and I don\u2019t think it came into the equation until later.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was pleased and lucky to progress as I did and happy to do the job that I did.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe wonderful women who went before me were pioneers. They are my role models and my heroes, and I salute them.\u201d<\/p>\n
CC Owens said the future of the service would be to embrace the differences in its officers \u2013 whether that is gender, race or different skills and interests.<\/p>\n
She told delegates: \u201cPolicing is different. We should be bold enough to embrace our differences because that\u2019s how we get legitimacy with the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn policing, we need different skills. We need people who are brave, people who are strong, people who are emotionally courageous, people who are mentally courageous, people who do detail. None of us can be all of those things. So we need to embrace our differences.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the challenges for women in senior positions is that we don\u2019t want to pull up the drawbridge behind us.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe early women in policing made an extraordinary journey and I thank them for that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE future for women in policing isn\u2019t about being a \u201cbra-burning feminist\u201d, Surrey\u2019s first female chief constable said. Speaking at a session at the Police Federation conference to celebrate 100\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions\/239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}