Women in the police profession and a review of the situation in the Serbian police

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to present the results of the research in which we examined the professional integration and advancement of women employed in the Police Directorate for the City of Belgrade. The problem of integration and advancement of women in the Serbian police was investigated at the Police Directorate of the City of Belgrade, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, in the period from 2016 to 2017, by using a qualitative and quantitative methodology. The results showed that there are objective circumstances that stop women at a certain stage of career promotion, which have origins and a multi-level stronghold, emphasized at the social level influenced by patriarchal relationships. The results suggest that circumstances of a formal and informal nature are aggravating and that they fundamentally confirm theories of gender inequality in the masculine professions, such as the police profession. In police services, in Serbia, women still constitute a minority that is covertly discriminated against and publicly segregated on the sidelines of the profession.