Agreement Reached in the Multi-Party Negotiations - Transitional ...

with not the same emphasis as the in the Criminal Justice Review. Some anomalies are
glaring – having only two women out of the nineteen on the Policing Board sends the
wrong signal and raises questions as to the Board’s commitment, credibility and
effectiveness in monitoring the PSNI’s gender balance. Recommendations on the retention
of women within the service suggest childcare provisions and more flexible working
arrangements. However, the recommendations particularly targeted at women are for
women with caring responsibilities, not the only issues that women have.
The register of interests will help break the secrecy of traditional male organisations and
the neutral working environment should make for a more comfortable workplace.
Recruitment of women in the PSNI is increasing and a Gender Action Plan has been
drawn up. The Plan includes precise, recommendations, which are practical but also
attempts to tackle less obvious practices that disadvantage women, such as networking. A
recommendation that groups under-represented in Specialist Units should be targeted to
apply for positions, the Plan suggests prioritising female officers. This recognises women’s
particular disadvantage within the range of categories. Since there are overlapping identities
with women being part of other under-represented groups, promoting women should
impact on the others.
In terms of community policing, the establishment of District Policing Partnerships gave
more local control than the measures put forward by the Criminal Justice Review. Still
women lost out because of their under-representation in district councils. They did
however comprise a little over half of the independent appointments that were made. The
experience of Strabane in tackling domestic violence shows how effective it can be when
women’s priorities are brought to the fore. Changes in policing set out to deal primarily
with sectarianism can benefit gender but gender also enables sensitive sectarian aspects to
be pushed through. A question worth raising but which is not explored here is whether
Sinn Féin’s refusal to take their place on the Policing Board and to engage with the current
policing arrangements impacts on gender. If the PSNI has so far failed to bring on board
the Nationalist community does it make the force more determined to show a result in the
other main area of under-representation, women police officers? Again, because of Sinn
Féin’s position, policing remains under constant scrutiny. Does this ensure that resources
are allocated and that action is taken to implement aspects of the Patten Report – such as
the neutral working environment – as confidence building measures towards the inclusion
of nationalists and which by-the-by benefit women? Paradoxically, with one main player to
the Agreement off-side on this issue, is pressure to deliver maintained and progress
(outside of the political dilemma) less slow than in the other areas of institutional reform
examined in the earlier sections?
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