Women and police leadership: a European insight

Achieving greater diversity within police organisations remains a key pillar of reform agendas across the world. Developing a more diverse landscape of police leaders more particularly, has been hailed as fundamental to unlocking the promise of organisational change. This paper focusses its attention on women working in police leadership roles within Europe and draws upon empirical evidence gathered from interviews with women strategic police leaders from 15 different countries across seven European regions. Our paper explores senior policewomen’s narratives of acceptance, negotiation and resistance in their climb to the top of European policing systems. In doing so, it exposes the gendered nature and impacts of police selection & promotion systems across jurisdictions.