Impact of 'the ethos of masculinity' on the position of women in the police

Abstract

A unique position in a society and their specific function, give police officers more opportunity than to ordinary citizens to turn their prejudices into the most serious discriminations, the most prominent among them being particularly gender, sexual, ethnic and racial discrimination. It is undisputed that the most frequent victims of police discrimination are the citizens, however, situations where the discrimination is carried out within the police organization itself are not rare either. In this regard, it is necessary to make difference between external and internal police discrimination. Judging by the majority of papers, the analysis of internal discrimination is usually based on examining the position of women within police. At the same time, it is especially pointed to the problem of their integration into police environment, which represents a typical 'macho' subculture where the male domination determines every process. Such an atmosphere contributes to creation of resistance towards female co-workers, despise of their competences and sexual harassment on the job. Due to the manner of execution, specific characteristics of the actors and clannishness of the police subculture, the research of gender discrimination and sexual harassment within police profession is considerably difficult. This, however, does not give us the right to give up the research and thus provide for guesses about the proportions of this phenomenon and expressions of the final opinions without the exact indicators. There have been several researches of this problem in the world, whose results suggest at least some indicators and prevent approximate estimates. In this paper, in addition to the general characteristics of the observed phenomenon, we are going to point to some of the results of the mentioned researches and end the paper with suggestions on how to fight this issue.

Jedinstvena pozicija u društvu i specifična funkcija pružaju policajcima značajne mogućnosti da svoje predrasude pretoče u najozbiljnije diskriminacije, među kojima se posebno ističu polna, seksualna i etnička diskriminacija. Najčešće žrtve takvih postupaka su civili, međutim nisu retke ni situacije u kojima se diskriminacija odvija unutar same policijske organizacije. U tom smislu, potrebno je praviti razliku između eksterne i interne policijske diskriminacije. Sudeći prema većini radova, analiza interne diskriminacije obično se zasniva na sagledavanju položaja žena u policiji. Pritom se posebno ukazuje na problem njihove integracije u policijski kolektiv, koji predstavlja tipičnu 'mačo' potkulturu, u kojoj dominacija muškaraca određuje svaki proces. Takva atmosfera doprinosi stvaranju otpora prema koleginicama, nipodaštavanju njihove sposobnosti i seksualnom uznemiravanju u službi. Zbog načina izvršenja, specifičnosti aktera i zatvorenosti policijske potkulture istraživanje tih pojava je izuzetno otežano. To nam, međutim, ne daje za pravo da odustanemo od istraživanja i time omogućimo iznošenje konačnih sudova bez egzaktnih pokazatelja. U svetu je sprovedeno nekoliko istraživanja polne diskriminacije i seksualnog uznemiravanja u policijskoj profesiji, čiji rezultati sugerišu bar neke pokazatelje i sprečavaju paušalne procene. U ovom radu, pored opštih karakteristika posmatrane pojave, ukazaćemo i na neke od tih rezultata, da bi rad okončali predlozima za suprotstavljanje tim pojavama.