By Any Other Name: The Difficulties of Recognising Female Police Violence

Abstract

Violence as a foundational element of police work is continuously reaffirmed and justified through police labour as ‘violence workers’ (Seigel, 2018). Hiring more female police officers has recently been seen as a way to reduce police violence. However, would employing more female officers change the relationship between policing and violence? Arguments in favour of more female police tend to rely on stereotypical understandings of gender, emphasising that women are naturally less aggressive and more likely to be caring and compassionate, often obscuring the violence enacted by female police officers in doing so. Female officers may be more likely to engage in violence out of necessity due to police culture and occupational norms around the use of force. Examining female police across countries such as the United States, Nigeria and Slovenia, this chapter establishes female police violence as a broader pattern, reflects on how female officers participate in police violence and addresses the extent to which masculinised police culture structures the expression of police violence. This chapter concludes with a discussion of why hiring more female police officers is not an adequate solution for reducing police violence, as police officers enact and are complicit in violence, regardless of gender.

Citation

Branch, M. (2023), "By Any Other Name: The Difficulties of Recognising Female Police Violence", Banwel, S., Black, L., Cecil, D.K., Djamba, Y.K., Kimuna, S.R., Milne, E., Seal, L. and Tenkorang, E.Y. (Ed.) The Emerald International Handbook of Feminist Perspectives on Women’s Acts of Violence, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 219-231. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80382-255-620231015