Women in the Hong Kong Police Force

This chapter introduces the framework of this book and the bodies of literature it refers to. It describes the main questions that the book aims to answer, i.e. why did women police in Hong Kong develop the way it did, and what are the implications for theories of gender, police organisational culture and colonial policing. We describe the broad trends of women in policing, and describe the two models of policewomen expansion: segregation versus integration. We outline the common problems faced by policewomen. Then we survey the literature in relation to the question of whether women could do some or all police work, and point out that the question is rarely asked of men. We describe the elective affinity between gender essentialism and police work, the gendered organisation perspective as well as heterosexism and heterosexualism as useful conceptual tools for understanding women in policing.

This chapter describes the contexts and early development of policewomen in the west and in China. There are many similarities in terms of the broad patterns (i.e. policewomen handle women and children-related police tasks), but there are also differences in the contexts giving rise to the introduction of policewomen. Then we introduce the predecessors of policewomen in Hong Kong—female searchers and mui-tsai inspectors—and how the lobbying by women’s groups (in turn influenced by developments in Britain) led to the recruitment of the first woman sub-inspector of police and then the first cohort of women recruit police constables. We describe the recruitment, training and tasks of early policewomen in the 1950s and 1960s. The division of labour between policemen and policewomen was very clear, but even though gender essentialism was the underlying factor for this division, there were some subtle changes in what were considered tasks that “men cannot do”. Instead of sex segregation where police officers deal with victims and suspects of the same sex, now policewomen have been found to have essentialised feminine qualities which have made them more suitable for certain tasks.

This chapter describes the various factors behind the rapid expansion of women police between the mid-1960s and 1970s. These include general factors that led to an increase in policing demand and specific factors that led to more demand for policewomen. The two-pronged contemporaneous re-organisation of police work explains how gender enabled the proliferation of tasks deemed suitable for policewomen. Because of the equal pay movement and its success, the discourse of difference prominent in the 1950s was overshadowed by a discourse of equality. However, closer reading of the materials reveals inconsistencies and exaggerations to play up policewomen’s achievements, as well as a persistent need to qualify policewomen as feminine and therefore different, despite the fact that they were now supposedly “equals” to their male counterparts. Women were expanding to a broader range of units but the work that they did was still sex-typed. The expansion also created unexpected problems for some divisions and units, mostly because of gendered policies of the HKP.

The socio-political context in the 1980s and 1990s was overshadowed by talks preceding the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Future of Hong Kong, and the “transition” that led to the transfer of sovereignty from Britain to China in 1997. This chapter looks at policing needs arising out of this and other changes, and the ensuing manpower squeeze on the HKP. During this period the first cohort of policewomen to have benefited from the lifting of the marriage bar began to take up senior positions and acted as spokespersons for women police. Their rhetoric continued to emphasise equality between the sexes in the Force, but has shifted towards a discourse of equal value, and a downplaying of gender differences in leadership roles. As a result of the equal pay policy, the expansion of women’s deployment continued, although their roles in these units were still sex-typed. Official discourse qualified their achievements either as exceptions resulting from hard work or the feminine advantage that they brought to the job. At the same time, policewomen’s roles as specialists in dealing with women and children had not changed. The factors leading up to the decision to arm policewomen are discussed. However, there was no sign that senior commanders at the time were seriously considering the option to arm women. Once the decision was made, a wave of official discourse began to promote policewomen’s ability to handle firearms and anti-riot tasks. However, celebrations of women’s physical and technical prowess continue to appear alongside emphasis on their feminine qualities, including empathy, sensitivity and beauty.

Post-2000, in the official view of the HKP, represents the completion of the integration of policewomen into the Force. This period saw an even greater number of policewomen who have risen to senior positions. The Force was aware of work-life balance as a problem they faced but there were no real solutions apart from advising policewomen of the importance of not neglecting their families. In the early 2000s official discourse continued to celebrate policewomen’s feminine qualities and specialisation in dealing with women and children. The rise of domestic violence as a social problem renewed the attention on policewomen’s role as specialists to combat it. Of greatest relevance to this period is women police’s official role in Internal Security. The number of women in the Police Tactical Unit (PTU) remains small and the two-tiered system, with the elite PTU supported by the unarmed and lesser-trained all-women Tango unit, reinforces the marginal role of women in public order and anti-riot operations. This chapter also looks at how sexual impropriety remains a problem in the HKP, particularly when police strategies in dealing with commercial sex still rely heavily on the use of decoy police offices as agent provocateurs.

Gender essentialism has been and still is a key organising principle in the HKP. Its content and expression has certainly broadened and diffused over the past 65 years, largely as a result of changes in the police organisation’s external environment. But gender essentialism, heterosexism and heterosexualism remain central to how the HKP organises its police officers and their work. We argue that the HKP as a gendered organisation has to be understood in terms of the nature of colonial policing and its relevance to the present day. The gender system is tenacious in the HKP because of its inherent systemic qualities and operations, as well as its elective affinity with policing. Policies aimed at narrowing gender differences (e.g. equal pay and arming of policewomen) do not result in real changes in how men and women are deployed and treated in police organisations. Given the tenacity of gender, a fundamental shift in the police organisation’s orientation needs to be in place before real changes can take place.