Gender Differences in Perceived Role Expectations, Mental Health, and Job Satisfaction of Civil Police Constable
This study focused on police organizations in India to examine the role of gender in determining the nature of the relationship between the perceptions of police role expectations, mental health status, and job satisfaction of employees.
In police organizations, male constables are generally expected to be strong, aggressive, bold, and authoritative, while female constables are often expected to be polite, facilitative, conformist, accommodating, and nurturing. Officers and the public expect them to perform their roles according to their gender.
The role expectations of the police personnel are found to be based upon the nature of their duties at different levels. Interaction between work role expectations and stereotypic gender role expectations is further complicated within police cultures.
Policing is a hierarchically organized occupation in which there exist strong expectations of appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Policing relies upon well-defined rank relationships and clear expectations that orders issued by a superior officer will elicit compliance from junior officers. However, this can conflict with gender role expectations.
Norms based on gender role expectations interact with those based on work role expectations in predicting the outcome of communication between superiors and subordinates behavior in role-appropriate role-inappropriate ways.
The policeman’s role has come under considerable scrutiny in the past few years. Unfortunately, much of the research fails to help us understand the police role in contemporary society. A major failing has been the lack of an adequate definition, and this has led to much confusion. Over the past few years, police have been experiencing a major change in their role expectations, and this change has been brought on in large part by the advent of the community policing philosophy.
Also, courts have influenced the police role through decisions regarding the content of substantive criminal law and by instructing as to the due process of law. Yet, while most modern police organizations have raised their standards for police training and education, questions of the effectiveness of efforts to transform policing practice remain.
Incidents of aggressive, undisciplined, indifferent, insensitive, and unresponsive behavior, and the conduct of policemen are attributed to the stressful situations and working conditions which inevitably cause unwarranted stress to the members of police working at various positions. Occurrences of suicides, attempted suicides, and attacks on seniors, juniors, and colleagues coupled with unfortunate incidents of firing and senseless use of weapons are manifestations of stress on police.
Women in police service often experience tremendous stress. In a survey conducted on police personnel serving in Gujarat, Patel (2006) found that around 65 percent of women working in the police were under tremendous work pressures and stress, which was badly affecting their family life. Parsekar, Singh, and Bhumika (2015) conducted a cross-sectional study among police constables in police stations in Karnataka, India. The results of their study indicate that one-fourth of the participants reported having high levels of psychological distress.
10 stressful activities experienced by the police personnel are highlighted as staff shortages, not enough time available to spend with friends and family, occupation-related health issues, overtime demands, fatigue, finding time to stay in good condition, eating healthy at work, excessive administrative duties, too much computer work, lack of training on handling new equipment.
The objectives of this research were;
To examine the differences in the demographic variables (age, experience, and salary), perceived levels of police role expectations, mental health status and job satisfaction of male and female police constables.
To investigate the nature of the relationship between the police role expectations and mental health of male and female police personnel with their job satisfaction.
To examine the potential mediating effects of mental health dimensions on the relationship between police role expectations and job satisfaction of male and female police constables.
The findings have significant implications for police organizations trying to increase the recruitment of female police employees. Findings indicate that the police department should concentrate on removing discrepancies in the job conditions of the male and female police personnel as significant differences have been reported in the experience and salary received by male and female police personnel.
The police organizations should also make efforts to reduce, eliminate, or modify stress among police personnel using psychological techniques based on the Western model and Indian psychological model, yoga, relaxation, and meditational techniques.
Article details
Gender Differences in Perceived Role Expectations, Mental Health, and Job Satisfaction of Civil Police Constables: A Quali-Quantitative Survey
Mahesh Kumar Maurya
First Published September 3, 2019 Research Article
DOI: 10.1177/0972558X19859069
The Oriental Anthropologist: A Bi-annual International Journal of the Science of Man