Conditions for gender equality in police leadership – making way for senior police women

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse and discuss conditions for gender equality in police leadership. This is done by interviewing 28 sworn police leaders in Sweden, and using a doing gender perspective for analyses. The results show that women and, to a greater extent, men in police leadership do gender traditionally. Explanations for the lack of female leaders and strategies for increasing the number of female leaders are shown to either focus on women as individuals (mostly men) or organisational structure and culture (mostly women). Further, strategies to reach gender equality goals are critically examined. These could be used to create concrete diversity and equality work within police and other organisations. Whether or not quantitative gender equality work (raising the number of females in leadership positions) can create changes in qualitative gender equality (the learning of new norms to change experiences of inclusion and exclusion in relation to gender) is discussed.

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