Having had numerous conversations and heard talks by women as part of the wider, diversity, movement this year, Mark Rowe considers what ought still to change, given that women by whatever metric – above all the number of those badged by the UK regulator Security Industry Authority – still only make up about ten per cent of the security workforce. Despite numerous publicity campaigns and acknowledgement by the industry that it would like more women, has vacancies that it would love to fill with women, they are not coming forward. Is that because of some discrimination against women, or wider issue that makes private security less desirable than other service jobs as a ‘career of choice’, to quote the new BSIA marketing campaign.
As for the police, it’s become taken for granted that a private security workforce ought to reflect those served. On a campus for example, if the security officers are young and a male-female balance, they are more likely to be approached by students. Everybody is then happy – students can raise welfare and crime concerns, the university can address them, to retain students.
As in many other aspects of private security, a go-to resource is Prof Martin Gill’s SRI (Security Research Initiative), part of his Perpetuity Research consultancy. In early 2020, he brought out a report on the experiences of women in security, based on replies from hundreds of practitioners. While he found much to be positive about, most women stated that they felt the sector was ‘male centred‘, or even an ‘old boys’ club’. That matters because it implies (as the woman also stated) a lack of female role models.
Two general points to add of mine. First, that whatever the women’s cause, from suffrage on, women desiring better things have a choice to make: do they seek equality with men (in the workplace for example) or do they seek better treatment in women’s matters (such as around contraception, or the current VAWG, violence against women and girls, campaigning). Second, do they seek to address economic issues such as equal pay. Or, do they seek to change culture; the behaviour of men in society, that affects women, whether by freezing them out or seeking to make them feel miserable (or even doing so through ignorance).
Such as, and we have all witnessed it, drunk blokes harassing women in social events or men being over-familiar in the office by putting an arm around a seated woman’s shoulder. These things are hardly confined to private security or related lines of work such as the police and military. Nor is it new. I think of my mother, a railway office clerk in the 1950s and 1960s. The job of work and the office building are long gone – computerised – but one experience she related was of a man placing a hand on her shoulder; she retorted by silently putting her hand on his, taking it off and letting it drop.
Challenging culture may work one person at a time, but is not enough in itself, any more than making a law would be to change behaviour. In spring 2022, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan launched a general campaign ‘about talking directly to men and boys to get the message across that words matter and that there’s a link between misogyny and violence’. Thus in the gents of some sports stadia and in City Hall in Docklands there are slogans on the mirrors when you wash your hands (pictured, the London Stadium at Stratford). Male violence against women and girls can start with words, Sadiq Khan said at the launch. Except that elite sportsmen and politicians are hardly beacons of civility to women, and returning to private security, those providing services to the rich and powerful may face the added disadvantage of being looked down upon, or worse.
Is there a percentage of women higher than the current 10pc or so in the sector to aim for, short of 50pc (a perfect balance being hardly likely)? Would 25:75, or 40:60, be enough to give strength in numbers to make the cultural harassment (by bullies, let’s use a general term) more difficult? To repeat, those who would make changes for a better world have to choose, because you cannot in practice go after all things. For generally speaking in the last say 60 years reformers have sought, with success, cultural advances (race, sexual equality) which arguably has come at the expense of economic, trade union if you like, issues (pay, contract working conditions).
Because oddly the one thing I have never heard in an EDI conversation is pay. Yet (as a security manager remarked to me the other day) the average guard force no longer has many white middle aged blokes. They are young Asian males and east Europeans, because they are the only ones who will take the minimum wage or just over; so he said. Perhaps women take one look at the pay rates and decide they’d rather work in a shop or a care home or a call centre, without having to pay for the SIA badge and training? Which takes us to the greater UK problem of chronic low pay in the services, too low for having a family or affording your own home.
Part two: allies and friends.
