“Exploring police officers’ perceptions of their female colleagues in Uttar Pradesh, India: a phenomenological analysis”

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to explore Indian police officers’ perceptions of their female colleagues through Bourdieu and Chan’s framework of habitus, practice, field, and capital. We interviewed 12 police officers in Allahabad, India, who were recruited through purposive and snowball sampling. We translated, transcribed and coded their interviews from Hindi to English. Applying Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, we identified two major themes: (1) the work of women is consistently devalued in policing culture; and (2) patriarchal sentiments influence police officers’ views towards their female colleagues. This study expands our understanding of the prevalent gender bias against female police officers in India. Findings may assist in redesigning policies and interventions that reduce gender bias and discrimination within Indian police organisations.

KEYWORDS:

• Police officers
• women colleagues
• perception
• gender bias
• India

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Saumya Tripathi

Saumya Tripathi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work at the Binghamton University, State University of New York. Her specific research interests are gender based violence, gender discrimination, unpaid care work, economic empowerment, international social work, and computational social science.

Sameena Azhar

Sameena Azhar is an Assistant Professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Service. Her clinical experience and research focus on global health disparities in HIV and sexual/reproductive health. She is currently a fellow through the NIDA-funded Research and Ethics Training Institute (RETI) at Fordham.