ROUGH ROADS TO EQUALITY

The majority of mid-level personnel said that there was no difference in the training of men and women. Over
four-fifths of Constables agreed that training was substantively the same for men and women.
As mentioned by participants in the focus groups, a few practical differences do exist that should be noted.
One of these is different height requirements for men and women. Further, during physical training, women
can take three days leave when menstruating, which is made up by an additional 15 days for make-up training.
While it is promising that women generally receive the same training as men, other problems may be
present during the training period. For example, in one of our interviews with a senior policewoman, it
was mentioned that during physical training, male recruits “would pass crude comments relating to [the]
physical attributes of a woman’s body”. The possibility of sexual harassment, and the vulnerability of new
female recruits to it, should be monitored throughout the recruitment and training process, and if found,
swiftly and adequately addressed through the stipulated procedures.
Further, from these findings, it appear that women personnel gain considerably from their trainings, which
is an encouraging sign. Thus, rather than problems with training per se, what participants articulated was the
need to specifically target and redesign training to build capacity among women.
In our focus group discussions, personnel specifically identified driving, computer skills and English
language skills as areas they wanted training on. In Sylhet, mid-level women also mentioned training on
cyber-crime as an area of interest. They added that while they get 4-5 training sessions in a year, they felt
that each session of 3-7 days was insufficient and highlighted the need for 15 days training.
In our interviews, senior female police officers highlighted a number of training needs to guarantee that
women personnel can be most effective. These suggestions include:
• Stress Management: “If women are married then there are family obligation and you have to juggle
between family and work. Stress management in training is not available”. 67
• Physical Training: “After training is over, there is no physical training to test your fitness. In the army,
every year there is a physical training test”. 68
Senior officers also articulated the need for substantive training to be more widely available, so that women
personnel are prepared to take on the full spectrum of police work. Such statements echo findings from the
PRP’s survey of police officers in 2011, which found that fewer women received training in crime management
and criminal investigation than their male counterparts. Roughly 4.3% of women officers said they received
such training, compared to 15.5% of men. 69
67 Interview with a senior cadre woman officer, April 2014.
68 Interview with a senior cadre woman officer, April 2014.
69 Police Reforms Programme (2011), “Baseline Survey on Personal Security and Police Performance in Bangladesh”, p. 21: http://
prp.org.bd/downloads/Baseline%20Survey%20on%20Personal%20Security%20and%20Police%20Performance%20in%20Bangladesh%20-Summary%20Report.pdf
as on 2 December 2015.
Survey Findings
WOMEN POLICE IN BANGLADESH
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