According to Tito Karnavian, Indonesia’s national chief of police, many other countries have a police force consisting of around 20-25% women while in Indonesia, that number is only about 5-6%.
Tito lamented the low percentage of female officers within Indonesian law enforcement, and the even smaller number in command positions, during a speech marking the 69th anniversary of women being accepted into the police force at the Police Science University (PTIK) yesterday.
Tito said female police officers had many advantages over their male counterparts. He said they were generally more sensitive and were better equipped to handle cases involving women and children. He also said they were less likely to engage in corruption.
“There should be an affirmative effort to get policewomen the same opportunities as male police,” Tito said as quoted by Kompas.
Tito said he wants to take steps to get the percentage of female police officers to at least 20% and he told the audience that one way he plans to make that happen is to have an entire polres (a police department covering a certain geographic area) staffed entirely by women.
“It would be all policewomen, from the chief of police, to the deputy chief, officials and field heads,” Tito said, as quoted by Wartakota adding that he imagined the all-women polres being placed at an airport.
Tito said he wanted to see how such a polres would operate and imagined that they would particularly apt to handle the special issues of migrant workers, who have been known to suffer from blackmail at the hands of male police officers.
While it is admirable that Tito wants to bring more women into the police force, he needs to realize that one huge barrier to his goals are the sexist and utterly archaic virginity tests that all female recruits are forced to undergo. Until that abhorrent practice is banned, women will rightly question whether they want to be part of an institution that still requires it.
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