Gender rhetoric and Swedish police officers’ perceptions of victims

ABSTRACT

Sweden is considered to be among the most gender-equal countries globally and this philosophy influences every aspect of Swedish culture from medical care to foreign policy. It is not clear, however, to what extent this approach has been accepted or adopted by Swedish police officers. Using interviews with 27 Swedish police officers, this study explores the use of gender rhetoric in descriptions of victims. By performing an inductive thematic analysis, we find that officers have internalised the gender-equal approach but make statements alluding to adaptation of both gender-blind and gender-aware rhetoric when describing victims. When describing their own personal experiences with victims, officers use language informed by gender stereotypes and gender performativity suggesting that these principles have not been fully adopted.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender rhetoric
• victim label
• police officers
• Sweden
• gender performativity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michelle N. Eliasson

Michelle N. Eliasson, M.A. is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law at the University of Florida. Her areas of research are policing, victimization, and qualitative methodology. Her latest work explores how police officers perceive victims' credibility.

Melissa S. Morabito

Melissa S. Morabito, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at University Massachusetts Lowell in the School of Criminology and Justice Studies and an Associate at the UMASS Lowell Center for Women & Work. She has an MSW from Columbia University and received her Ph.D. in Justice, Law and Society from American University. Her research focuses on issues that pertain to the police response to mental illness and sexual assault as well as the implications of diversity in policing. Her work has appeared in Criminology & Public Policy, Race & Justice and Victims & Offenders.