The Changing Roles of Women Officers in Public Order Policing in Hong Kong

The Changing Roles of Women Officers in Public Order Policing in Hong Kong

&nbsp;&nbsp;The police are regarded as a male-dominated mescaline profession. Western police studies tend to suggest that women officers will face role-conflicts when they enter the male-dominated masculine occupation and they only play a complementary role in the public order policing. The Hong Kong Police Force was established in 1844. Women police officers were never perceived as indispensable component by early British colonial police heads. The first women officer had not been recruited until 1949. Yet, in 1950s and 1960s duties assigned to female cohorts were confined to supporting duties such as conducting clerical jobs, handling female suspects and taking care of wandering children rather than law enforcement and anti-riot operations. On the top of this, sexually segregated and discriminatory arrangements could also be easily noted in reviewing the managerial history of the Hong Kong Police.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;This study finds that the role of women officers started to change in late 1960s, especially in the sphere of public order policing. For instance, women police officers took up some frontier positions in the 1967 riots. They received formal anti-riot training since 1970s. A female anti-riot squad was formed in 1992. Since 1995 all newly recruited Hong Kong women police officers have been armed. In 2005 women police officers were placed in the front to deal with Korean demonstrators directly during the WTO MC6 period. The evolving responsibilities of female police officers from indoors administrative work to frontier crowd management duties not only reflect the changing attitude towards women in Hong Kong society, but also signify the vitalization of women officers in policing Hong Kong. The data of this research are largely derived from archival materials and in-depth interviews with 12 women police officers who served the force from 1950s to 1980s.