She is not a la Priyanka Chopra in Prakash Jha’s Gangajal, striding in starched clothes with a coiffure hairdo; she is the next door girl who has taken up a job to walk the mean streets of cities and towns in a uniform, but continues to remain trapped in the morass of moribund traditional roles at home as well as at the workplace called the police station.
Even before the first ray of the orange orb flecks the skies, she gets up and prepares breakfast for herself and her family members. She jumps into the packed train in order to sign the station diary at sharp eight am.
Then standing on the diesel and petrol fumes saturated grey gleaming dusty road with the harsh sun glinting on her bangles, she keeps a watch on a religious procession that takes hours to snake around the lanes of North-East suburb of Mumbai-Ghatkopar. Her breakfast box remains unattended in the police station.
The burning low sun slowly hides itself somewhere below the horizon glowing blood-red in the skies in the gloaming time, and the woman in uniform packs her uneaten breakfast box, goes to a changing room and hurries to a railway station to catch a train back to her home to prepare dinner for her family.
The roles a woman has to play as expected by a society that is dominated and influenced by patriarchal modes of thinking also spills over into the police force, and subtly manifests its biases and prejudices in day-to-day interactions.
The gender woes
A woman Constable (attached to a police station in Mumbai) says, as a matter of fact: “Police job is a demanding one there is no doubt about it, but then so are many other jobs with the same amount of stress. Nobody is complaining that the job is strenuous, but what is strange is the mindset of policy makers that refuses to come out of man-centric ideology when it comes to tackling issues in the police force.”
Concurring with the woman Constable, a woman Sub-Inspector says: “If you had come to this police station (in the North East suburb of Mumbai) some years ago, then you would have found that there was a ramshackle changing room with sunlight peeping down from above…the room did not even provide an elbow space. Of course now, because the building has been reconstructed, we have a proper changing room as well as a separate resting facility, but in several places there are no separate urinals for women cops, and nor do they have a changing room.”
She continues, “Then just think what happens to us during bandobast and patrolling duty which takes place every second day…don’t you think there should be bio-urinals? Just imagine we have to stand for hours and we don’t drink water so that we can avoid going to toilets. Given the kind of thinking our policy makers harbor, it is not surprising that they ever give a modicum of time to gynaecological issues.
“Take for example menstruation…everybody knows most women constables spend time out in the streets keeping a vigil on processions…don’t you think it is the duty of the force to see that tampons are provided and also ensure that women cops be given station duty during their menstrual cycle? But this is not all. A woman cop in our police station is in the late stages of pregnancy…but you can see her everyday rushing in at the stroke of eight am to sign the muster…no doubt the station in-charge has given her soft work, but then that is purely an individual decision and as there is no pre-maternity leave facility, she can go on leave only on the day her labour pains start.
“Women strength in the police forces is on the increase, and the need of the hour is not just a total change in the outlook but to dump biased and outdated policies into the dustbin for good. After all, like everybody else we also have 12 hours of duty which invariably many times gets extended to 14 to 15 hours.”
With a nearly 20 lakh strong presence of women in various police forces, coupled with a growing awareness of their gender rights, senior ranking women officials in a three-day national conference organised by the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) held at Gurgaon, in January this year, raised not just the much tabooed topic of the biological challenges that women face while carrying out their duties, but also sought gender-friendly environment and equipment.
The conclave witnessed for the first time women cops seeking changes in infrastructural facilities like sanitary pad disposers and incinerators, hostels with exclusive spaces for women, mobile female toilet facilities as majority women while on patrolling or bandobast duty eschew consumption of water so as to avoid toilets, which results in urinary tract infections.
The issues of ergonomics
Apart from the changes sought for a gender-friendly environment, questions were raised about the modes of training and efficacy of the equipment provided to women while carrying out their duties.
Most women cops concur that gears like bullet proof jackets, helmet, fire-arms need urgent ergonomic design changes that are suited to the woman’s anatomy. A study of over 300 women personnel revealed that wearing gears provided to the forces are tailor-made keeping men in mind (https://bprd.nic.in).
According to women constables, it was not just the bullet proof jackets, which acts like straitjackets resulting in breathlessness and pain, even other body-protection gear like helmet, lath, belt, shoes and shield need to undergo ergonomic changes when it is to be provided to women personnel.
The study pointed out that in West it is mandatory to provide gender specific equipment like helmets which has space to accommodate long hair and hands free belt for firearms and attachments.
The impracticality of the man-centric equipment is not confined to body-gears, even shape of firearms need to be reworked as a woman’s palms are small, many a time they are unable to have a full-grip with fingers on the trigger guard, the study pointed out, with a conclusion that an atmosphere which aggravates stress will adversely affect efficiency emphasising, “…and if a woman personnel spends 80 per cent of her time thinking of the uncomfortable environment and facilities, then how will she perform her duty?”