Female police chiefs: what's holding them up?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/2012/apr/03/female-police-chiefs-holding-up

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"Resilience is important, but of course the environment in which you operate is crucial," says Sara Thornton, chief constable of Thames Valley police. "In terms of working practices, very often jobs have been created around the needs of men, rather than the needs of women."

Since joining the police in the mid-1980s – when she says women were still "treated differently" despite equalities legislation – Thornton has risen to the most senior level in the service, and her name was recently mooted for the biggest job of all, Metropolitan police commissioner.

Asked what measures are now in place to support women with ambitions to become police leaders, she describes a workplace that has moved on considerably over the past three decades but still requires consistent and imaginative work from chief officers if women are to have equality of opportunity in their efforts to gain promotion.

When Thornton had her first child, part-time working wasn't allowed and she went back to the exacting demands of shift work. The benefits to parents of flexible working – offered as standard now – might appear obvious, but for anyone wanting to move up the ranks it seems that part-time hours can create new barriers to progress.

"I have a woman chief inspector who's very good and works part-time," explains Thornton. "In order to get promoted, she needs be in command positions. And I can't have someone in a command role who's not there half the time; it's not fair to anyone. So we did a really good negotiation, looked at what experience she needed, and she took on more hours and is now in a deputy command position."

To create that sort of opportunity, the drive "has to come from the top," says Thornton decisively.

At Northamptonshire police, deputy chief constable Suzette Davenport suggests that it may become harder for women to progress as the tough financial climate takes its toll, with cutbacks leading to officers seen as less "difficult" to manage being favoured for opportunities and promotion by hard-pressed bosses. And, as chief inspector Kerry McLernon points out, senior men leaving the service are not being replaced, meaning that the opportunities for everyone are shrinking fast.

With the pressure caused by recruitment freezes intensifying, research into the workload of 5,000 police inspectors by Cardiff Business School shows that increasingly stressed officers of this rank may simply opt to get off the promotion bandwagon. Findings from the report by Professor Peter Turnbull and Dr Victoria Wass showed that: "Female inspectors in general and part-time female inspectors in particular, find it particularly difficult to achieve an appropriate work-life balance within the inspecting ranks."

Davenport says the greatest challenge now is for women who want to be both leaders and mothers. "The default position should be that we can offer flexibility up until the point that, for good organisational reasons, we can't. I'm not convinced that this always happens."

"There is still a culture of presenteeism," says a female detective superintendent in the Metropolitan police who asked not to be named. "When I was a DCI my average working week was 80 hours. I was young, free, single and knackered. Through the riots last year, we had conference calls at 11pm, and it was expected that you were in the office." It's hard to imagine a single parent being able to cope with such hours, or this kind of disruption to family life.

There is still an issue of women lacking self-belief, says Jenny Lax, who was the first part-time sergeant to become a part-time inspector in South Yorkshire police. This highlights the importance of mentors and networks, which are mentioned by virtually all the police leaders interviewed for this piece: many forces have established their own pool of mentors and in others, female officers have initiated networks which offer support to members, even across forces if an issue is particularly confidential.

A variety of role models – other women in senior positions ranged throughout the ranks – are also vital if more junior officers are to aspire to leadership roles, says Gwent's chief constable Carmel Napier.

"There are still not remotely equal numbers of female chief officers," she points out. She's right – just 17% of chief officers are women. And retired chief constable Julie Spence highlights a growing concern among senior female police leaders, that once this cohort of women at the most senior levels have retired, which many will within the next few years, there is gaping hole where the next generation of female leaders should be. Female officers with the required breadth and depth of experience are simply not available for promotion to chief officer level, and so numbers, which may be low but have been on the increase, are likely to go backwards.

The issue of police reform could exacerbate this effect come November, says Napier: "If you've got just one police and crime commissioner selecting [chief officers] you might get more diversity, or less, depending," she points out.

While Davenport says there is certainly still sexism in the police, and notes that some women, even at very senior levels, feel isolated even today, she also says the service is streets ahead of many other public sector organisations. An awful lot has changed for the better, agrees Thornton, but she pinpoints an interesting anomaly that still exists.

"At the Senior Police National Assessment Centre – if you want to be a chief officer in any force, you have to pass this – the percentage pass rate for women is higher than for men," she explains. "They're passing with more qualifications, less time in service, and they are more likely to have been fast-tracked. What that says to me is that average women are not putting themselves forward. There's that saying, isn't there; we'll know we have succeeded in getting equality when the average woman reaches the same level as the average man."

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