Comparative Policing Study
...I. Anti White Slave Traffic organizations felt they would help stem the flow of prostitutes to and from Europe and suffragettes wanted them to ensure more fair treatment for women from the police and court of Jaw. In fact it was a suffragette, Nina Boyle, who first put women into police uniform as soon as the War started. However, the use of women in foreign countries progressed in slow stages. It was not until the beginning of the century that the female presence began to infiltrate the ranks of the police service(Felicia Wong ,1986 ). In United State,the first police matrons appeared in the nineteenth century and, in 1905, the first documented appointment of a woman with police powers took place (Peyser 1985). Shortly thereafter in 1910 the first woman with full police power was hired by the Los Angeles Police Department (Melchionne 1976). The early history of women police consisted largely of social service in which women had to meet higher standards for police employment, but received lower wages, were restricted to a special unit or bureau, and were assigned primarily to clerical, juvenile, guard duty and vice work (Schulz 1989). Women police were not permitted to be promoted except within their own special women's unit nor were they permitted to take the same promotion test as men. Finally, and most damaging for opportunities to demonstrate their general value to the organization, they were not permitted to perform basic patrol duties (Price and Gavin 1982, Peyser 1985). Women could only be promoted within their own bureaus because, they were told by their police superiors, they had not had the full "police experience" of being on general street patrol. It was, of course, the same male police administration that had refused over the years to assign women to general patrol and thus had blocked police women’s access to the required experience (Price and Gavin 1982). When women finally were given the opportunity, as a result of Federal law mandating equal opportunity regardless of gender or race, to perform general police work and serve on patrol, they demonstrated their fitness for police work. While ,Women Police were first introduced to Hong Kong in 1949 when a Women Police Branch (WPB) was formed. Women were separately established from their male counterparts, paid less money and deployed almost exclusively on duties connected with women and juveniles. Gradually, however, they were given wider responsibilities and undertook tasks connected with nuisance offences, traffic enforcement and crime. In November 1972 the Hong Kong Government granted women civil servants pension rights and introduced phased pay parity with male officers which was completed in April 1975. The Force male and female establishments were then fused and women were employed in most areas of police work. By monitoring the recruitment process, however, the numbers of women police were maintained at a level below 10% of total Force strength. Women police in Hong Kong are not normally armed, do not undergo full Internal Security training and are under represented in specialist areas such as Marine Police and the Police Dog Unit. Women currently comprise approximately 12.5% of Force strength and are deployed in the majority of units. The different gender c...