Gender Pay Gap 2023
7. Career Progression
Women account for over 40% of chief constables in the UK
”I joined policing in 1995 ,the year Pauline Claire became first female chief constable in the UK. I saw her achievement as I joined and assumed there would be no barriers, but I have faced a number of challenges throughout my journey. It is amazing that women now account for over 40% of chief constables in the UK, so great progress but it’s taken a long time. It is better now but still there are barriers for women and I want to help remove those barriers.
We are a force with both female chief and deputy. Something to be celebrated, two top positions held by women for first time in our history. Whilst Dorset Police does have a good tradition of women chiefs, when we look at our pipeline of women at all ranks we can see we have significant work to do to encourage and support our next generation of women leaders.
As a senior female officer working in a male dominated environment I feel a great level of responsibility as a role model to both women and men within policing.
I absolutely see part of my role as setting the standard and ensuring all members of Dorset Police feel able to bring their whole selves to work. We often talk about “whole selves” but what do we really mean?
Our aim is for all members of our team feel comfortable in sharing with colleagues who they really are, whether this is their ethnic heritage, sexuality, disability, things they struggle with or other personal aspects.
As a woman, a wife, a mother and someone who is neurodiverse I have my own experience of challenges and I hope I can use this to inspire others to break their own glass ceiling. Together we can continue to improve representation and close the gender pay gap”
Deputy Chief Constable Rachel Farrell
Career Progression
We continue to make progress and increase the support being offered to women to support career progression. During 2022/23 we have made strides forward to improve
the representation at rank which has seen success at Sergeant, Inspector, Superintendent and Chief Officer ranks.
One of the key elements of this, is to first encourage women to commence a career in policing, and we have already seen success in this area. Whilst we need to
continue to encourage women to join us, we also want to support those women who are already part of our organisation to progress their careers. To help us to do this our
Positive Action Team has developed a programme of support to assist police officers to achieve success in the promotion process.
In November 2020 we launched our first programme, available to all those from underrepresented groups, who are qualified to sergeant rank. Following the success with
the first programme, we listened to feedback and adapted the approach to launch an offering for those seeking to progress to inspector rank. During 2022 the Force ran
processes for both sergeant and inspector, 16 Positive Action candidates sat the promotion processes and 100% achieved success.
Below you can see the high-level outline of what was on offer. We continue to share our approach and support other Police Forces across UK policing.
Promotion Support pipeline
- Information webinars -
- Positive Action Registration -
- Unlocking Potential Workshops -
- Online Support Programme -
- Mentoring Programme
During recent years the initiatives delivered within Dorset Police to support women in police staff roles has helped us to achieve parity with female population across all police staff grades, we remain incredibly proud to have delivered and maintained this. However, it is still the case that women occupy the majority of roles in the lower grades. During 2023 we developed an initiative in line with the national “Learning At Work Week” to support police staff career progression aiming to encourage and support women to identify career development opportunities and engage with their own career advancement. This great work continues to be a focus for us.