‘Police should be proud’ of record rise in female chief constables

A RECORD 40 per cent of Britain’s chief constables are now women, as police leaders seek to drive sexism and misogyny out of the ranks.

Nineteen of the 49 chief constable posts in England and Wales are held by women, almost five times the number in 2019 when there were only four.

In the past two years, Merseyside, Avon and Somerset, Suffolk and North Wales have made history by appointing their first female chief constables.

It marks a dramatic shift in 28 years since Pauline Clare was appointed as the first female chief constable in 1995, when she took over the Lancashire force. That ended 166 years of male domination following Sir Robert Peel laying the foundation of modern professional policing in 1829.

Police chiefs attribute the shift to efforts to stamp out the sexist canteen culture as well as attempts to increase the overall number of female officers.

More than a third (34.9 per cent) of police officers are now women, a total of 50,000, the highest level since records began. The number of female entrants is even higher, with women making up 42.5 per cent or 13,326 of new recruits. Zoë Billingham, a former HM inspector of police and now chairman of the police pay review body, said it represented a “generational change”.

“[Policing] is a service of the 21st century which brings on the most talented people and represents the community that it serves. Without that, policing is not going to be a service that the public trusts,” she said.

Ms Billingham saw no reason why policing could not achieve 50:50 parity to “fully represent” the community it served but said it still had to modernise by letting in more direct entrants further up the ranks rather than sticking to recruiting constables at 18 or 21, as well as flexible working and job sharing.

Attempts are also being made to challenge gender divides, as there are still fewer women in firearms and public order as more gravitate to roles in the investigation of rape, sexual offences and domestic abuse.

Ch Supt Harvi Khatkar, vice-president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, was the first woman from an ethnic minority to serve as a firearms commander in West Midlands Police. She is also a public order commander.

She said role models were critical to show women and ethnic minorities what could be achieved while simple changes were being made to remove barriers to promotion for those with child-caring responsibilities such as the requirement for future commanders to spend three straight months on a residential training course.

Rachel Kearton, Suffolk’s first female chief in 179 years, and the National Police Chief Council’s lead for workforce diversity and representation, said: “Having over a third of all chief constables as women is really positive and something that policing should be proud of.”