Abstract
A substantial body of existing literature has outlined the importance of police having the trust and confidence of the public they serve. In attempts to increase this level of trust, many police organisations are implementing various forms of capacity building programmes, of which a concept called ‘gender mainstreaming’ is a relatively common feature. While its focus is ostensibly on assessing taking men’s and women’s concerns and needs into account at all levels, stages, and forms of operations, the visible face of gender mainstreaming in a police context is commonly an increase in the number of women represented within the organisation.
Within existing literature – both academic and grey – there is a common assumption: that this increase in women’s representation in the police will result in increased levels of public trust in the police. Moreover, there are some who state that an increase in women’s representation in the police will result in increased levels of women’s levels of trust in the police. In scanning relevant literature, however, there seems to be no theoretical or empirical justification offered.
Previous studies emphasise the importance of civilians’ perceptions of procedural justice, and of their ability to have motive-based trust in the police. Making judgements about this latter form of trust can be hard for civilians, who often have little evidence available which indicates the trustworthiness of police officers. Instead, they turn to ‘value-based narratives’ – those pieces of information that can communicate officers’ values and intentions. A shared social bond is suggested as one such narrative. Using the Social Identity Approach (SIA) as a theoretical framework, then, this thesis explores the extent to which one form of social bond – a shared gender identity – can act as a mechanism for building trust in the police.
Using a case study of two police districts in the South Pacific Island nation of Tonga, and the definitions provided in the SIA, I explored the extent to which gender was a salient social identity, and to which a shared social identity seemed to act as a mechanism for building trust in the police. The Tonga Police have an explicit focus on increasing the trust and the confidence of the public they serve, and since 2016, have recruited equal numbers of men and women as part of their yearly intake.
According to the key tenets and proposals of the SIA, I anticipated that gender would have high salience in the Tongan context, and that civilian women would discriminate in favour of policewomen, trusting them more than policemen. As a result, when the number of women in the police increased, I expected that women’s trust in the police would also increase.
Over a period of four months, I spoke with 69 civilians and police employees. In those conversations, I used a combination of quantitative measures, and broad, open-ended, qualitative questions. Recognising the importance of acknowledging indigenous research methodologies, and the value systems around which these are centered, I focused on building relationships with participants, and on letting them guide our conversations as much as was practical.
The conversations I had with participants indicated that, according to the definition provided by the SIA, gender identity may not be as salient as I had anticipated. A shared gender identity may therefore not have the same impact on women’s trust in the police as anticipated. However, gender more broadly may act as a mechanism for building trust in the police in Tonga. Civilians in both Police District 1 (PD1) and Police District 4 (PD4) illustrated that, rather than trust based on a shared gender identity, some members of the community trusted policewomen more because they perceived them to possess a range of favourable behaviours and characteristics: competence, integrity, compassion, and collaboration. In other words, they reflected the key considerations of trust based both on procedural justice, and motive-based trust.
In order for the police/community relationship to benefit from the potential that policewomen represent, the police must work to meaningfully incorporate women into the organisation – not simply increasing the numbers of women who are recruited, but who are then channelled into administrative roles that could be carried out by non-sworn staff. Then, the potential for gender mainstreaming to perform a transformative role may be realised. At the same time, the importance of focusing on increasing perceptions of policemen’s and policewomen’s competence and compassion must not be overlooked.