Segregation as Efficiency? Group-Specific Institutions in North India

Abstract

A number of nations have instituted group-specific institutions or “enclaves” for women. The assumption underpinning such bodies—physically distinct, autonomous units in which constituent members belong entirely to a particular group—is that the segregation of female administrators will better serve the interests of women by isolating them from patriarchal norms and practices. I scrutinize this assumption by examining India's experience with all-women police stations, and carry out eight months of ethnographic research in and around police stations across the states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. I find that while all-women police stations allow complainants to speak freely, they may also diminish capacity for female administrators working in law enforcement, create hurdles for victims of violence, and, in some ways, marginalize gender issues from the mainstream.

Policing in patriarchy: An experimental evaluation of reforms to improve police responsiveness to women in India

“…These observations carry important insights for debates over representative bureaucracy and the question of whether the presence of members of marginalized groups within a public agency, such as the police, improves performance ( 4 , 5 , 30 ). Our findings suggest that descriptive representation does matter; female officers played a critical role in shaping the impact of the help desks.…”

“…In the case of the WHDs, the mainstreamed nature of the intervention (housed in regular, mixed-gender police stations) may have played a critical role. Although we are not able to directly compare the WHDs to all-women stations, recent research suggests that the act of “segregating” women’s cases may have the perverse effect of marginalizing female complainants (creating barriers and displacing cases) as well as female officers (who are isolated and sidelined from broader policing structures) ( 13 , 30 , 46 ). Locating women’s help desks in regular stations, by contrast, appears to have worked to increase attention to women’s security within “normal” police work.…”

“…The police’s hesitancy to file cases is driven in part by acute resource and capacity constraints, which push officers to lessen their caseloads ( 28 ), as well as by political pressure to show lower official crime rates ( 29 ). Patriarchal policing norms also push against case registration: Officers are encouraged to “protect families” by promoting reconciliation rather than the legal rights of women ( 27 , 30 –32 ) and often blame victims of sexual assault or question the validity of their claims. A recent report, for example, found that 39% of officers believe that complaints of GBV are unfounded ( 33 ).…”

Does Victim Gender Matter for Justice Delivery? Police and Judicial Responses to Women’s Cases in India

“…The learned members of the Bar have enormous social responsibility and obligation to ensure that the social fiber of family life is not ruined or demolished," 18 and that women should be deterred from filing cases to, "satisfy the ego and anger of the complainant." 19 These statements imply that cases of VAW are (a) frivolous, (b) reported without delay, (c) submitted by those with an agenda, or (d) best resolved through reconciliation (Basu 2012;Jassal 2021). I scrutinize these assumptions using two sources of data.…”

Do Women Prefer In-Group Police Officers? Survey and Experimental Evidence From India

“…Our study is situated in India, a country often in the news for gruesome cases of VAW. The nation also stands at the forefront of a swath of police reforms, many of which are premised on the notion that-separate from pursuing representation for its own sake-women should be hired in law enforcement because they are preferred by female complainants for tackling VAW and that policewomen are innately suited for such cases (Jassal, 2021). Upon analyzing a representative survey on policing-the first carried out in the country with ≈ 15,000 respondents-we show that citizens, even complainants of VAW, are likely to affirm negative stereotypes about female officers.…”