Same old story of good cop–bad cop? A narrative approach to social representations of the police's role in addressing gender‐based violence in Indian gender advocacy

Abstract

Despite considerable evidence of the patriarchal nature of the police and underreporting of gender‐based violence in India, there is a dearth of literature on how gender advocacy campaigns in India tackle these issues. This study addresses this gap by exploring how the police is represented in gender advocacy in India. The material comprises of eight campaign videos from two ideologically opposing organizations: Amnesty International, an international human rights organization and Ministry for Women and Child Development, a government body. Social representations theory and narrative analysis are applied in the analysis to answer how the role of the police is narratively constructed. Results suggest two contrasting representations held by each organization in line with their organizational identities. While Amnesty constructed the police as villains obstructing women's access to justice, the Ministry represented the police as heroes defending women's safety. The analysis contributes a novel way of locating anchors and objectifications by a focus on narrative actions and goals. Additionally, the discussion of the findings broadens conceptions of hegemonic and polemic representations, arguing for a more power‐centric approach that conceives of hegemony in terms of access to media channels and material resources. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Not to blame, but still responsible: Negotiating social representations of neoliberal feminism amongst urban middle‐class Indians

“…This video was chosen as it deviated from neoliberal solutions of self‐transformation to advocate for reforming the police, helping to facilitate discussions on institutional reform. Yet, simultaneously, the female police volunteer is depicted as a neoliberal feminist hero, capable of putting an end to the harassment and domestic violence she witnesses by speaking up whenever she witnesses it (D'silva, 2022). Detailed descriptions of the videos are attached as Supplementary material.…”

“…Simultaneously, solutions to these deep‐rooted problems placed responsibility on individuals, rarely demanding structural change. A follow‐up study (D'silva, 2022) of Indian campaigns specifically promoting institutional change still found the dominance of neoliberal tropes that placed responsibility on individual women in their encounters with institutions. Selected campaigns from these two studies are utilised in this research as stimuli for exploring reception, elaborated under Section 5.…”