Scholarly record

FEMALE POLICE OFFICERS: LIFE PLANS AND VALUES

Ulbossyn Zhanatayeva, Kuralay Muhambetova, Aigul Saliyeva

Abstract

The working environment of police officers has “special conditions”. Female police officers serve under the same conditions as male police officers. Female police officers, performing their duties in the traditional male subculture, however, hold senior positions; work in operation support units and “analytical” units. Thus, female police officers have gained experience in a field heavily dominated by men, and they are ready to share such experience. Despite this, many issues including the peculiarities of “a woman doing ‘man’s work’”, the changes of female personality, the differences in life strategies and career expectations of female police officers and civilian women, as well as the issues of gender “dichotomy”, femininity, power, duty and women's experience in general, are still not adequately explored. The main goal of this research is to study the life plans and values of female police officers in Kazakhstan. One of the challenges researchers faced was to choose the most relevant methods to study the above issues. This research was conducted using in-depth interviews along with other traditional techniques of “value orientations measurement” invented by Shalom H. Schwartz, the author of Theory of Basic Human Values, by Milton Rokeach, a social psychologist, and by Sandra Bem, the psychologist known for her works in androgyny and gender studies.

Publication details

Back to publication list