Perils women in uniform face

28-year-old Aimoni* remembers vividly that April 2013 morning in Assam's Goalpara police station where she was posted at the time. "It was a muggy day, and we were at the station. At around 11.30, the commanding officer asked us to get ready. A group of angry Bangladeshis had gathered near the district commissioner's office over a spat with the Rabhas and we were to control the crowd," says the police officer. A body of a missing Bangladeshi had been found and the Rabhas, a local Hindu tribe, were suspected to be behind the killing.

It did not take time for things to escalate. The mob, which refused to let the body be moved, got violent. Cars were smashed and state property destroyed as the aggression escalated. Caught right in the middle were Aimoni and her colleagues. And then, as it often happens with women officers, came a group of abusive young men with one loudly threatening to rape her.

"We were stuck at a corner trying to control a bunch of women. And then these boys come out from nowhere; they must have been around 18 to 20 years old. One boy looked at me and mouthed many expletives. He said he would rape me," says Aimoni. A male colleague slapped one of the boys, but was reluctant to do much else. In sometime, police resorted to lathi charge, teargas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. When that did not help, it fired at the crowd. Three people were killed.

The agitation had been on for five to six hours by then. Long, tense, life threatening hours. But there was that added edge for Aimoni, as it often is for women law enforcement officers for whom the uniform is not the armour that it is for their male colleagues, with the ever-present threat of sexual violence.

"I told the leader of the crowd to let us go, but he kept instigating them. I saw them catcalling the women cops," recalls Utpal Sarma, a bureaucrat posted in Goalpara at the time and now retired. "We cannot go to any law and order situation without a woman force, as there are always women agitators," he adds.

Two years on, Aimoni continues to be angry and resentful. "I kept on thinking over it for weeks after… They say that a woman cannot be arrested by a male officer, and yet, a man can misbehave with a woman police officer."

The resentment runs deep, not just for Aimoni but for many thousands of others like her who battle daily sexism and continue to break new ground in their tough line of duty.

Balancing their roles of mother, wife and daughter with their careers, women officers in enforcement agencies like state police forces, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and the Indo-Tibetan Border Patrol (ITBP) often tread the ‘more vulnerable’ path in conflict and crisis situations.

Many say dealing with the unstated but obvious sexism is tough and, like in many other sectors, they have to work doubly to ensure that their work is seen. Along with that come issues of private space, dirty toilets or none at all. Amongst the biggest challenges in their line of work are sanitation and health issues.

So many stories

The everyday stories of overcoming challenges big and small are many.
A year before Aimoni confronted the violent mob in Goalpara, woman police officer Pramila Padhi was beaten up at a Congress rally in Bhubaneswar. As things turned violent after Congress leader Jagdish Tytler reportedly incited the mob, Pradhi, 39, was assaulted by 35 men. Videos of her being beaten up, her hair being pulled and being kicked made the rounds. She had to be admitted to the hospital, and later was awarded a compensation of ₹50,000.

Chandni*, 42, who is currently posted in a police station in central Delhi, says her day starts much earlier than her husband, who is a traffic cop in the capital. "I wake up and, with the help of the maid, send the kids to school, get food ready and then leave," she says, adding that a normal work day stretches usually to 12 to 14 hours.
She resents the fact that she has had to skip two training camps. "My husband said there will be no one to take care of the kids."

Like others, Sangeeta, 31, a Ghaziabad-based ITBP medical officer who is currently on deputation with the NDRF and took part in rescue operations in quake-hit Nepal, takes pride in her work but also acknowledges that the odds are stacked against women.

"There are more women in the forces today, and yet women are seen as lesser beings. We are given the same jobs as men, but what we say is never taken very seriously. We cope by ignoring this and by working doubly hard, so that we are not seen as weaker and frail."

One of the problems she faced in the Nepal mission – when the tough rescue operations went on for a week without virtually any rest – was sanitation. "Time was running out and we had to do as much as possible, despite the aftershocks. A colleague and I were on our period, and there were few resources. Also, we could not put our problems in front of others."

The numbers

Rough Roads to Equality, a recent study by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) on women police in South Asia, says that women comprise only a small fraction of the forces. "The latest figures on women in police, to date, for Bangladesh (4.63%), the Maldives (7.4%), India (6.11%) and Pakistan (0.94%) throw up a grim regional average of 5%," it states, adding that the force is seen as a male bastion, where 'brute strength' is required.

According to the report, workplace sexism is rampant in the state forces while the elite Indian Police Service (IPS) is underrepresented.

Work satisfaction is low for many women officers who don’t complain for fear of being seen as weak. The quota system, it says, was not helpful in the long run.

Releasing the report, Jacob Punnoose, former director general of police in Kerala, said male officers resisted when he mooted equal pay for both sexes in the state. "They were aghast and said that women did not deserve equal pay. But we implemented it nevertheless, and things went on pretty fine." Women police stations never help, in his view. "Instead, they alienate the women."

A senior police officer, posted in the restive northeast, said on condition of anonymity that the quota system had been the undoing of many women officers. "In our state, women can avail a reservation quota, and an additional quota if they are from Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) backgrounds. They feel doubly obliged."
"States like Kerala that have removed the women quota are faring much better. When you put women in a corner, they underperform," she adds.
The officer, who's been in the service for over a decade, says that this indoctrination makes women lazy. "They want to be posted in cities where their families live, as they have children to take care of," she says.

Addressing the issue of sanitation, she says, "I think the benchmark for every police station should be its washroom. There are no health benefits in the force in general, and as such, women are very vulnerable to diseases. Women police officers routinely suffer from UTIs (urinary tract infections). I usually have two to three bouts every year."

Binalakshmi Nepram of the Gun Survivors Network says it doesn't help that the government is usually reluctant to accept internal violence. "India does not have a statute for dealing with internal violence. In any conflict that has a military operation, it is imperative to send a woman officer, but that is never the case,” she says. “And that's why we lack preparedness.” India has sent more than 2 lakh peacekeeping personnel across the world till date.

Nepram says that India's peacekeeping missions are laudable because of “the work put in by the incredible women”. Yet, she hopes for better security sector reforms by the government.

Symbols of change

Woman peacekeeping agents act as symbols of change when they are sent out on the streets to stop violence, says Smita Naik, who trains the pre-deployment unit of the UN Peace and Security missions in India sent to countries like Kosovo, Haiti, Congo, South Sudan and Liberia. "You are putting a woman in a position of power, and not as a victim," she says, adding that women in UN missions maintain law and order, escort women when they go to collect firewood and water, and patrol markets. "I see that as phenomenal posturing."

Often, women in peacekeeping missions witness a lot of violence on other women. "We know that rape is a weapon of war, but not many know how that tool is used. Women in conflict areas are brutalised, they are impregnated, and then ostracised by their own community. The peacekeeping cadre also helps the women emotionally," she says.
"Women in uniform challenge the norm, the idea of victimhood in a country where patriarchy deems that the women be the victim."
Annie Abraham, DIG (intelligence), CRPF, who has led several United Nations Mission to Liberia (UNMIL), manned a battalion in Liberia during the Ebola breakout. The batch of women officers she led was responsible for the security of the Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Monrovia and manned her residential quarters. Abraham feels that her force is better equipped than the police and the other enforcement agencies.

"There is little room for fear and scepticism in my contingent, and the girls know what they are headed for. Also, the experience in India is quite diverse and prepares you. These girls go to insurgency-hit areas, and are prepared to handle conflict," says Abraham.

Women are also winning the sanitation battle. When women were first allowed in the CRPF, sanitation was an issue, she says. "But, we worked around to tackle it. Today, CRPF buses for women have toilets, and the women are given all the facilities that men are given."
Yet, Abraham feels that the issue is more about equitability than equality. "We need to go beyond the basics. The government should not just rest at increasing their quota, but facilitate their working conditions by positive discrimination, considering the wider a the woman is expected to play,” she says. "There is also a need to sensitise the opposite gender.”

The UNMIL contingent in Liberia is made up of only CRPF personnel, while in Sri Lanka, the peacekeeping force was led by the Indian army. The tales of bravery abound. In Jaffna, CT Bimla Devi was the first woman to be felicitated by the president with the Sena Medal for recovering 1192 detonators during the LTTE conflict.

"The media makes it seem very glamorous, and says that not many women do this, but they do. So many girls go fight militants in the jungle," says Assam IPS officer Sanjukta Parashar, who was recently in the news for being one of the few IPS officers in the state and for gunning down over 16 dreaded militants in the forest.

"I usually form a riot control unit in every station I go. In the station I am in there are 20 girls. One of them, who was in control because the station in charge was on leave, saw through a crisis where a fire broke out very effectively. She stayed up the whole night, and commanded the force," says Parashar.

Asked about her jungle excursions, Parashar says there are no crazy stories to tell. And that when one has to take a leak, you go under a tree. "We are prepared for this, women know this when they join the force, and if you act bravely, you will be regarded," she says. "Because, when a militant shoots at you, the bullet does not know if you are a woman or a man."