Re-theorizing the progress of women in policing: An alternative perspective from the Global South

Abstract

Women’s entry into policing, a traditionally masculine occupation, has been theorized almost entirely through a liberal feminist theoretical lens where equality with men is the end target. From this theoretical viewpoint, women’s police stations in the Global South established specifically to respond to gender violence have been conceptualized as relics from the past. We argue that this approach is based on a global epistemology that privileges the Global North as the normative benchmark from which to define progress. Framed by southern criminology, we offer an alternative way of theorizing the progress of women in policing using women’s police stations that emerged in Latin America in the 1980s, specifically those in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

How southern is Southern criminology in Latin America?

“…Recently, Carrington et al (2023) argued that the Global North can also learn from the experience of women's police stations in Argentina. I contend that the analysis of criminological research and knowledge produced in the Global South has also theoretical implications for the Global North, including questions about the criminological knowledge produced there.…”

Value, logistics and violence: Contemporizing imperialism for a critical Southern criminology

“…The genealogical methodological orientation was directed towards exposing the cultural and institutional vestiges from colonial periods which it was claimed shaped the historical conditions of existence in present-day CIOCCHINI and GREENER oppressive institutions (Carrington et al, 2016). Their major claim, however, was that criminology's ethnocentrism results in an urgent need for alternative epistemologies (Carrington et al, 2018(Carrington et al, , 2020(Carrington et al, , 2023Carrington & Hogg, 2017;Dixon, 2024a). Diverging from Asian and Arab criminologies, this literature foregrounds a universalistic agenda around recognizing colonialism as a past event-a legacy from "real" colonialism sedimented primarily through discourses and institutional approaches to crime-but forming a common experience for Global South peoples.…”

“…The consequence is a distorted image of the potential for Global South institutions or actors to resolve the brutality of crime control more broadly, dissociating analysis from the highly oppressive social arrangements contemporaneously existing in the Global South. This was epitomized in the study of women police stations from Argentina with the suggestion to 'export' them to other societies, as a kind of catch all solution to the problem of violence against women (Carrington et al, 2020(Carrington et al, , 2023.…”