A brave new century

The 1990s were marked by a strong divergence between police departments in the way in which senior managers, especially commissioners, responded to the new imperatives of equity legislation. At the very end of the 1990s this changed, and a clear convergent trend was confirmed. The principal cause of this change was the appointment of new commissioners who were willing to move with the times and apply key principles contained in equity legislation. By 2015, one hundred years after the appointment of the first policewomen, the formal barriers to women in policing had been largely dismantled, although evidence remained of a cultural lag in attitudes and some practices. A common system of non-discrimination in human resource management, with some moderate affirmative action measures, was apparent in every jurisdiction.