Re-theorizing the progress of women in policing: An alternative perspective from the Global South
| Author | Kerry Carrington,Jess Rodgers,Máximo Sozzo,María Victoria Puyol |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806221099631 |
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Re-theorizing the progress of
women in policing: An
alternative perspective from
the Global South
Kerry Carrington
University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia
Jess Rodgers
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Máximo Sozzo
Universidad Nacional de Litoral, Argentina
María Victoria Puyol
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Abstract
Women’s entry into policing, a traditionally masculine occupation, has been theorized
almost entirely through a liberal feminist theoretical lens where equality with men is
the end target. From this theoretical viewpoint, women’s police stations in the Global
South established specifically to respond to gender violence have been conceptualized
as relics from the past. We argue that this approach is based on a global epistemology
that privileges the Global North as the normative benchmark from which to define pro-
gress. Framed by southern criminology, we offer an alternative way of theorizing the
progress of women in policing using women’s police stations that emerged in Latin
America in the 1980s, specifically those in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Corresponding author:
Jess Rodgers, Centre for Justice, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street Brisbane City,
Brisbane, Queensland, 4001, Australia.
Email: jess.rodgers@qut.edu.au
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2023, Vol. 27(2) 283–304
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/13624806221099631
journals.sagepub.com/home/tcr
Keywords
Masculine police culture, policing gender violence, southern criminology, women in policing,
women’s police stations
Introduction
For more than two decades theorizing about the progress of women in policing has been
influenced by a theoretical model derived from liberal feminism. This framework strives
to bring women into the mainstream of existing governing and policing structures in
equal partnership with men, rather than radically change those social structures to address
the manifold intersecting axes of gender, class, race, religion and coloniality that shape
these state institutions (Eisenstein, 1981: 190–197). The original iteration of this theoretical
view is referred to in the criminological literature as the Brown model (Brown, 1997; Brown
et al., 1999; Humiston and Rabe-Hemp, 2020: 11). This model predicted that the increase in
the proportion of women in the police would produce a moment in the future in which their
integration would become equitable to that of men. This was to be achieved through the
erosion of discrimination and harassment, the integration of women officers in all forms
of policing, as well as their increasing authority and leadership within the institutional
police hierarchy. More than two decades later, however, women’s participation in policing
in countries like United Kingdom and Australia has increased to 30% or more, yet the stub-
born masculinist culture of policing as an institution persists (Brown and Silvestri, 2020;
Porter and Prenzler, 2019; Silvestri, 2017). The entry of women into policing as equal to
men has not been a panacea for improving police culture as iberal feminists hoped.
Our article begins with an explanation of an alternative theoretical framework situated
broadly within southern criminology. The southernization of criminological theory urges
both critical reflection on the dominance of ‘western’‘colonial’‘northern’ways of
knowing, as well as the discovery of new theories and innovations from the peripheral
worlds in the Global South. Next, we outline our critique of the application of a liberal fem-
inist model for assessing the progress of women in policing, which works on an assumption
that gender equality amounts to gendered justice. Then we take as an example from the
Global South, the women-led police stations designed to receive victims of gender violence
that emerged in the Province of Buenos Aires (hereafter the Province), Argentina in 1988 to
illustrate an alternative way of theorizing the progress of women in policing. The article con-
cludes that these unique women-led police institutions are not relics of the past but present
new opportunities for enhancing both the role of women in policing, and the competence of
the police to respond to gender violence. Framed by southern criminology, this article
reverses the epistemological assumption deeply ingrained in social science that theory
and best practices in policing can only flow from the English-speaking countries of
Global North to the Global South (Carrington et al., 2016; Valdés-Riesco, 2021: 32–33).
Southern criminologies, feminisms and border epistemologies
In Southern Theory (2007), Raewyn Connell argues that the metropolitan centres of the
English-speaking countries of the Global North dominate the production of the world’s
knowledge systems. This is what she calls metropolitan thinking and it applies as
284 Theoretical Criminology 27(2)
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