The University of Sheffield P.Dick The social construction of policing: discourse, gender and identity Submitted for the degree of PhD 2000 The social construction of policing: discourse, gender and identity Penelope Dick Submitted for the degree of PhD The University of Sheffield Management School June 2000 Contents Page Acknowledgements List of tables Publications Thesis summary Thesis overview 1 Chapter 1: Social constructionism and agency-structure dualism 6 Chapter 2: Foucault, discourse and power 37 Chapter 3: Methodology 73 Chapter 4: The historical evolution of policing as an 99 activity and an institution Chapter 5: Results o f the repertory grid analysis 119 Chapter 6: The construction of policing as an activity and an identity 133 Chapter 7: Constructing negative accounts o f experiences 164 as a female police officer Chapter 8: Constructing positive experiences as a female 186 police officer Chapter 9: Challenges to self-construction: the influence of context 204 Chapter 10: Discussion and overall conclusions 233 References 255 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Catherine Cassell, for her rigorous, analytical, thoughtful, inspirational and challenging supervision, as well as for her patience and friendship. Thanks also to the police constabulary that gave me access, the many officers I spoke to during the field work, and especially to Derek Calvert, whose humour and unflinching directness made the whole process hugely enjoyable. I would like to acknowledge Rashmi Biswas with whom I jointly conducted the repertory grid interviews and Devi Jankowicz, who worked with me on the content analysis of the repertory grid data. Thanks also to Phil Johnson for his comments on one the drafts of the thesis, and friends and colleagues at the University of Teesside who commented on some of the ideas that informed it. Friends who have listened to, argued with, supported and otherwise inspired me should also be thanked, including Jo Gray, Frances Storr, Vicky Davidson-Boyd, Suzanne McGregor, Gillian Symon, Ruth Keating and Olwyn Hazleton. Thanks also go to my sisters, Sue, Liz, Jenny and Maureen and my brothers, Oily and Jim, to Aunty Sandy and, posthumously, to my dearest Mam and Dad, Jane and Arthur Dick. List of tables page Table 3.1 Proportion of female officers in uniformed 75 establishment Table 3.2 Number of participants by rank and gender 76 (repertory grid interviews) Table 3.3 Brief biographical details of participants (discourse analysis) 95 Table 5.1 Results of first categorisation exercise 121 (content analysis of repertory grid data) Table 5.2 Category descriptions, frequency and 123-124 percentage of constructs by gender and rank (repertory grid data) Table 6.1 Discourses used in discourse analysis 135-138 Publications Refereed journal articles submitted Dick, P. and Jankowicz, A.D. Performance value judgements in a UK police force: the influence of power and gender. Submitted to Policing: An International Journal of Police Management and Strategy, February 2000. Dick, P. A theoretical account of the processes involved in producing the vertical and horizontal segregation of policewomen: a discourse analytic approach. Submitted to Feminism & Psychology, March 2000. Rook chapters Dick, P. and Biswas, R. (1995) Jobs for the girls? The effects o f sex stereotyping on perceptions o f effective performance within the police service in Newell, S et al. (eds) The British Psychological Society Occupational Psychology Conference Book of Proceedings. BPS Books: Leicester. Dick, P. (1998) The self at work: A Foucauldian perspective in Nodder, R. et al. (eds.) The British Psychological Society Occupational Psychology Conference Book of Proceedings. BPS Books: Leicester. Dick. P. (2000) Maintaining law and order: the discursive reproduction o f the status quo in a UK police force, in Nodder, R. et al. (eds.) The British Psychological Society Occupational Psychology Conference Book of Proceedings. BPS Books: Leicester. Dick, P. (forthcoming) Interpretative Discourse Analysis in Cassell, C. and Symon, G. Qualitative methods in organisational research and practice. London: Sage. International conference papers Dick, P. and Biswas, R. (1996) An assessment of Equal Opportunities and the role o f HRD in the Police Service Paper presented to the Academy of Human Resource Development, March, Minneapolis, Dick, P. and Cassell, C. (forthcoming) Managing diversity in a UK police forcei XXVI1 International Congress of Psychology. July, Stockholm. National Conference Papers Dick, P. and Biswas, R. (1995) Blue for boys: Examining organisational culture as an explanation for the gendered division o f labour within the Police Service. _Paper presented to the British Academy of Management Conference, September, Sheffield Business School. Dick, P. and Biswas, R. (1995) A fair Cop? HRM and the development o f an exclusionary organisational culture. Paper presented to the “Understanding and Practising HRM” Conference, December, Nottingham Business School Dick, P. and Cassell, C. (1999) Talking Cop: Discourse, diversity and identity in a UK police force. Paper presented to the British Academy of Management Conference, September, Manchester. Dick, P. (forthcoming) Using interpretative discourse analysis to explore work identities. Paper presented as part of symposium Expanding our research and practice. British Academy of Management Conference, September, Edinburgh. The social construction of policing: discourse, gender and identity. Penelope Dick Summary The aim of this thesis was to examine how male and female police officers constitute policing as both a profession and an identity through discourses, and to provide a theoretical explanation both of the act of self-constitution and of how discourses are reproduced, maintained or changed during the construction of accounts of work experiences. A second aim was to explain why policewomen express contentment with a status quo that is often culturally constructed as oppressive. Using a form of discourse analysis based on Foucauldian principles, it is argued that the nature of policing as a profession and an identity is a contested and highly political domain, and these tensions are revealed in the ways individuals attempt to construct their identities within the web of discursive resources available. Dominant constructions of policing do prevail, but there is a hegemonic struggle at the individual and relational levels of discourse (Fairclough, 1992) that opens up spaces where the position of female officers, with regards to promotion and retention, may be facilitated over time. It is suggested that because female officers are targeted with a host of discrediting discourses concerning their motivation, ambitions and credibility, this motivates them to construct positive accounts of their experiences in order to enable them to take up subject positions in dominant discourses of liberal democracy: specifically, those that emphasise the autonomy and integrity of the self. It is therefore argued that self­ constitution at the level of identity reproduces hegemonic discourses at the ideational level (Fairclough, 1992) mediated by the relational operation of discourse within the interactional context. The social construction of policing: discourse, gender and identity Thesis overview The purpose of this overview is to chart the changes that occurred in my thinking over the course of the development of this thesis in order to provide a coherent rationale for the questions that the thesis seeks to address. I began the thesis seeking to address two key questions: Are women’s experiences at work different to those of men? Does working with men affect the ways women see themselves? These questions were informed by a large body of literature that suggested the answer to these questions was affirmative (e.g. Freedman and Phillips, 1988; Sheppard, 1989; Marshall, 1995). I was specifically interested in asking these questions within the context of the police organisation, largely because it receives so much criticism for its treatment of women, and partly because I had worked in a police force as a psychologist and believed that this ‘insider’ knowledge of the organisation would be useful. These questions were also informed by my education and training as an occupational psychologist where the individual is a key unit of analysis (Hollway, 1991). The theoretical frameworks that informed my initial thinking can be broadly classified as products of mainstream social psychology. The idea that individuals have different experiences on the basis of social categorisation was informed by the literature on stereotyping (Allport, 1954, Bern, 1974, Schein, 1973; 1975; Schein and Mueller, 1992), and the idea that working within a male dominated organisation would affect -1 - the self-concept, by the literature on organisational and occupational socialisation (Van Maanen, 1975; Frese, 1982; Nicholson, 1984). Both these bodies of literature are based on assumptions in which the individual is conceptualised as a pre-given entity who is privileged as the source and agent of his or her own experiences (Henriques, 1984; Venn, 1984). The methodological consequence of this thinking was that my initial efforts to answer the research questions utilised positivist techniques (surveys) that attempted to provide measurements of both the organisation and of the individual. One of the first issues that I wrestled with at the beginning of this research was how to investigate gender differences in an organisation