The Social Construction of Policing: Discourse, Gender and Identity

That women are underrepresented in the senior ranks of police services throughout the economically developed world is not news. In this book, the reasons for this are explored in depth by understanding police work as socially constructed. That is, policing is not understood to involve certain objectively verifiable tasks and activities, but to be a highly contested domain of acitvities and practices whose meanings vary and are open to interpretation. Nonetheless, certain ideas about policing dominate how police officers themselves view their work. This book problematises these ideas and argues that they produce not only a certain outlook but also sets of material work-place practices that operate to disproportionately disadvantage female officers. Interestingly, few female officers interviewed for the study reported in this book believed themselves to be disadvantaged and the reasons for their relative satisfaction with the status quo are explored using the concepts of identity and discourse.