Proceedings of the 2nd World Conference on Gender Equality
Year: 2024
DOI:
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New Female Managers by Quota Who Entered the Dutch Police Force and Left Soon After
Esther Neven
ABSTRACT:
This research on gender equality at Dutch Police started as a “reflective professional” (Schön, 2017), noticing a sudden exclusion of the newly recruited female managers by Quota for new management postitions in a reorganization. Noteworthy after the huge efforts for gender equality in the Police top by means of gender quota and investments for inclusion. Right wing political changes destroyed the results of the gender equality strategy.
The results of gender quota investments
Between 2007 and 2011, the number of female managers at the Dutch Policetop increased from 11% to 31%. These results were part of genderequality investments for the Dutch Policetop by the then female Minister of Home Affairs (Ter Horst, 2007-2010). In 2008, she launched her program Police Top Diverse with two genderquota: half of the 20 new vacancies at the strategic level had to be filled with a female or bicultural manager between 2008 to 2011. For lower management positions, the aspired percentage was one third of all vacancies. Given the nearly empty pipeline of policewomen for the strategic level, the Minister decided to recruit female managers form outside the organisation by Direct Entry. She invited some policewomen to a Fast Track, a development program for the most talented of them to reach the strategic level, faster than usual.
Power
Power was fundamental to the quota approach: a top-down decision-making power to install quotas by the Dutch Police force. The female Minister forced the quota system upon her incumbent police managers (Benschop and Van den Brink, 2009). By using power, the female Minister herself also created strong resistance.
Public safety politicized
From 2011, the Dutch public safety policy was being politicized (Hoogenboom, 2017; Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, 2017). Diversity policy was no longer a priority at the central government. The new Cabinet decided to reform the Dutch Police Force as a Dutch National Police (Terpstra & Gunther Moor, 2012). This all proved to be a sudden and momentous event in the history of the Dutch Police Force, implemented as a top-down process (Bentvelzen & Postma, 2022; Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, 2017; Evaluation of the Police Act, 2012; Van Dijk et al., 2015; Van Reenen, 2016). All regional Police forces were merged into one central Force, which less strategic management positions. The program Police Top Diverse was stopped.
Resistance and identity threat
The strong resistance against the newly recruited female managers in the Dutch Police force seems to have strengthened the inequality regime the Police force historically was for policewomen, evoked by identity threat. Inequality is organisation grows under certain circumstances, a polarisation on identities occurs. The possibility of identity threat can be evoked by a many different of cues, including quite incidental environmental cues that signal the possibility of identity-based devaluation. (Steele, Spencer, Aronson, 2002). By this dynamics sensemaking and sense giving processes can occur (Jacobs et al., 2008; Ravasi & Schultz, 2016).
Social identity and inequality regime
The female managers experienced a multitude of tensions, power imbalances and contradictions that invariably affect their self-categorisation as organisational members and professionals, as well as their identification with and sense of belonging. This will be extra ordinary in the tight social identity of the Police force, with an historical inequality regime with many categorizations and intersections. Being female is risky for being framed in that organisation, notably when you are not educated together with fellows at the police academy, resulting in lifetime “brotherhood”. These dynamics strengthened identity threat. The whole quota group was excluded from the new strategic management positions. They were not seen on thier “composite identities” (Maalouf, 2000), and not evaluated by their talents for the new phase of the Dutch National Police.
Giving voice
Many conflict situations arose between those female managers and their police colleagues. Arguing from a different point of view was often reciprocated by power play. Salient in the interviews was the inability for the respondents to ‘give voice’ to their arguments and opinions in case of a reasoned discussion with police collegeas. Giving voice was often responded to with power and conflict. This response was quite different from the respondents’ experiences in former organisations. In appearance and style, the female managers noticed the contrast with policewomen who had been socialized within the police organisation.
keywords: policewomen, identity threat, inequality regimes