Women Police in a Changing Society: Back Door to Equality

This book offers a fascinating account of the development of women police over the past twenty years. It draws on the author's extended research in India, during a period of massive social change from a traditional society to a democratic, capitalist state. The author argues that the Indian experience offers a valuable alternative model to the Anglo-American experience, not only for traditional societies but for women police in the West as well.The book's central case study is the establishment in 1993 of all-women units in Tamil Nadu. This was a unique experiment that has been highly successful in enhancing the confidence and professionalism of women officers and ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency of the police. Mangai Natarajan argues that there are many routes to achieving equality and that back door approaches as those of Tamil Nadu may be more appropriate for traditional societies than routes followed by women police in many western countries. She argues that integration policy for each country must take account of the special roles and needs of women in that culture and the particular contribution they can make.At a time when policing is being rethought all over the world, not only in traditional societies, the Tamil Nadu experience offers important lessons for western countries that are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain women officers. Community-policing is attracting interest as an alternative to the quasi-military model, and given its concentration on diplomacy and interpersonal skills it is a model to which women are particularly suited.Natarajan's book is an important and original contribution to the literature on gendered policing, which to date has concentrated almost exclusively on the US and British experience.