From serving coffee to detective work – on the inclusion and emancipation of women in three Dutch police forces, 1950-1989

Organised by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research 

Speaker: Laura Brinkhorst (RMA), PhD candidate in police history at Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands)

Abstract:

As a government agency interacting closely with citizens, the police should ideally reflect society in its make-up. Since the 1950s there has been discussion in the Netherlands that more women should join the police. These demands from both society and politics are easy to track looking at newspapers and parliamentary debates.

However, how police forces reacted to this remains largely unclear for the post-war period. This webinar sheds light on adaptation processes within three mid-sized Dutch police forces (Leiden, Oss and Roermond) regarding the recruitment, inclusion and emancipation of women. It investigates the critical question of which actors, factors and internal dynamics within a police force facilitated or hindered the integration of women. Through a historical lens, the research aims to identify differences and similarities between three police forces in order to draw lessons from history to inform current practice. Which strategies were successful in the past and what is best avoided? We shall see that the history of women’s integration in local police forces depended on a complex interplay between motives of both emancipation and workload, the local police chief’s attitude towards women joining the force and the willingness to adapt from the rank and file.

Biography:

Having completed a Bachelor of History at VU University Amsterdam (cum laude) and the Research Master’s in Global History at the same university, Laura Brinkhorst worked as a junior researcher at Radboud University, on projects on the expropriation of Jewish property and local government during the German occupation. She is now a PhD candidate in Political History at Radboud University Nijmegen. With her research project ‘To Protect and Serve’, funded by the Dutch Science Association, she is investigating the way in which various municipal police forces in the twentieth century adapted to changing expectations from politics and society regarding the police, focusing on four themes: diversity and inclusion, duty vs. citizenship, police’s proximity to citizens and police – citizen interactions.

This is an online talk.
No registration is necessary – join us using this Zoom link. 

Photo credit: UnSplash, Maxim Hopman