Women make up less than 1% of the total police force, even though a quota of 10% is reserved for them, according to a recent report.
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)’s report titled Rough Roads to Equality: Women Police in South Asia August, 2015, the number of female police officers in the country is just over 4,000 or 0.94% of the total police force of over 425,000.
The situation in Balochistan is the worst, with only 103 female officers out of a total strength of 32,937 — less than one third of a per cent.
The situation in other provinces and departments are hardly better. In Punjab and Sindh, the number of female officers is 1,798 of a total of 149,719 (1.2%) and 902 of a total of 147,782 (0.61%), respectively. In K-P, the number of serving female police officers is just 438.
However, the situation is slightly better in Islamabad and Gilgit-Baltistan but not satisfactory. The percentage of female officers’ enrolment in the police force in the federal capital and G-B is 1.55% and 3.01%, respectively.
Of all the provincial and federal police departments, only the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is almost implementing the government’s order of reserving 10% seats for women, with 150 female officers, approximately 9.68% of the total force.
Further, women on higher posts in police is also a scarcity, with only one serving as female senior superintendent of police, 19 superintendents of police and three assistant superintendents.
There have, however, been some positive developments lately. In April 2014, Syeda Ghazala was appointed as the first female Station House Officer (SHO) in Sindh. She was appointed SHO of the Clifton neighbourhood. Despite her 10 year-experience of serving at a women’s police station, Ghazala said after joining a mainstream police station, she realised she was very inexperienced in basic policing duties like responding to rescue calls and securing a crime scene. She was able to build these skills only by working in the mainstream police station.
