The national campaign strives to tackle gender imbalance in middle management teams, particularly for sergeants and inspectors, address sexism and misogyny within police culture, and report progress regularly.
Guernsey Police joined in July 2023 and last year held its first large event to inform and educate on the HeForShe initiative commitments, particularly those put in place by other forces to support female officers and staff as they seek promotion.
This was part of the work to improve the retention of female staff.
‘We statistically monitor this as we go, looking at the barriers of why we don’t get as many people going for sergeant and inspector promotions, and what we can put in place to make that happen,’ said research and strategy manager Marie Mauger.
‘We look at different ways to encourage women to apply for things and different ways to demonstrate criteria.
‘Not everyone in this building is going out on a Friday or Saturday night and be confident to walk the streets and do that type of role. There are people in the background who are really good at analysing statistics or writing committee papers or translating legislation, making it understandable so we can train our officers. It’s about having a really diverse mix of skill sets.’
When chief officer Damian Kitchen joined the police force in Lancashire in 1996, he served under Pauline Clare, the UK’s first female chief constable.
He said that straight away Mrs Clare, who served for seven years in the top job, was a role model to him.
‘She was really forward thinking and she didn’t treat women more favourably, but she made sure their voices were heard and they had the same opportunities,’ he said.
‘There are more female sergeants and inspectors in the middle ranks but it starts to diminish when it gets to the senior team.
‘When I joined the police force 30 years ago, you would sit in a meeting table and a lot of the men didn’t want to listen to what women had to say, and that was the culture back then.
‘To be a role model and put people in positions where they can be seen is really important, mentoring and coaching is really important, and making sure that we lead by example.’
You need to be logged in to comment. If you had an account on our previous site, you can migrate your old account and comment profile to this site by visiting this page and entering the email address for your old account. We'll then send you an email with a link to follow to complete the process.