Women in Volunteer Policing: Exploring the Experiences and Perspectives of Female Special Constables in England and Wales

Women Navigating the Practical Challenges of Volunteer Policing

Narratives of the female Special Constables emphasised exclusionary operational models, characterised by male-shaped norms of rigid shift pattern expectations, often late at night, by inflexible fitness standards, and by narrow interpretations of volunteer officer role and value. A lack of flexibility and support, and a lack of recognition of broader gendered challenges regarding balancing domestic professional and volunteer commitments, hinder female engagement and, in particular, constrains long-term volunteer careers. Participant interviews underscore what many of the female Special Constables saw as the deeply entrenched gendered structures that shape the Special Constabulary, revealing its implicit historic design for individuals, predominantly men, whose volunteer participation is less contingent on balancing significant domestic or caregiving responsibilities. Participants repeatedly articulated a perception that the Special Constabulary had been “designed for men,” particularly young men with minimal domestic obligations, such as university students, “young guys who still live with mum or dad,” or “older well-off men” with greater professional autonomy and “who have a supportive partner back home.” This perception was intimately linked to “unrealistic expectations” of “heavy time commitment with little flexibility” and a reliance on “male-shaped models” of training, promotion, and specialisation. These observations resonate with prior observations on the gendered structuring of volunteering policing (Britton et al., 2022) and scholarship across policing more generally (Aiello, 2020; Bissett et al., 2012; Drew & Saunders, 2020; Franklin, 2005; Garcia, 2003, 2021; Parsons & Jesilow, 2001; Rabe-Hemp, 2009; Shelley et al., 2011; Workman-Stark, 2017):

The entire way we do things suits some men’s circumstances and lifestyles, but it doesn’t always fit mine. I enjoy being a Special Constable, but it is demanding. [#M]

It’s very hard to be a Special and to have a life. [#J]

The common normative conceptualisation of the volunteer role that Special Constables would primarily undertake “response” policing – mirroring the duties, the long, inflexible, and often with indeterminate end times shift patterns, and the unsocial hours of full-time salaried officers – was consistently identified as a fundamental barrier to female engagement. As one participant noted, “frankly, realistically, balancing the rest of life” became exceptionally difficult under such rigid operational expectations. The privileging of male-coded ideals of policing, particularly the valorisation of late-night response shifts, was identified as a critical impediment to diversifying the volunteer force. Policing has historically emphasised response-based, physically intensive tasks as central to its occupational identity (Birzer & Craig, 1996; Bissett et al., 2012; Carless, 2006; Cordner & Cordner, 2011; Schuck, 2014), a legacy that persists in the Special Constabulary and disproportionately disadvantages female officers. These normative presumptions of role were felt to be emblematic of an entrenched organisational disregard – obliviousness – for gendered structural inequalities in caregiving responsibilities and domestic labour:

Shift patterns of night shifts are not ideal. Needs to be some adaptability. You can only keep people on board if you listen to them, and childcare and this role do not match. [#S]

You can’t do an eight-hour nightshift on a Friday or Saturday night if you’re a mum and the kids will be awake at 6am on Saturday or Sunday morning. [#P]

Participants also reported encountering exclusionary, highly inflexible, and untailored constructions of “fitness to practice.” Interviewees described a common lack of reasonable accommodations for gendered and age variations in physicality, a lack of interest in body and physical confidence issues, and a lack of sensitivity and adjustment regarding maternity and menopause. Lack of awareness of other female-specific medical conditions, and an often pervasiveness “maleness,” “testosterone fueled,” “manly,” “competitive,” “judging” tone around fitness testing and wider related aspects of the physicality of the volunteer role, alongside a tendency for wellbeing and support provisions to be tailored almost exclusively 9 to 5 weekdays when volunteers were often unavailable. The rigid and inflexible binary interpretation in officer fitness assessment was seen as a significant deterrent to female participation. This is reflective of a wider scholarly discourse in policing, reflecting patterns of women being evaluated against “one size fits all,” standardised physiological benchmarks, without recognition of gendered and age disparities in physical strength and endurance (Brown et al., 2020, 2021). However, the part-time volunteer nature of female volunteer officers makes the impact and implications perhaps even more intense and consequential:

You get to an age, especially as a woman, where you no longer want to be rolling about on the gym floor with a gym full of young men. [#I]

I’m a woman, in my fifties, three children. Surely there is a sensible approach that recognises I’m not as fit or strong as a young guy in his twenties? [#A]

I’ve served for almost twenty years. Then I struggle with the fitness test, and there’s no thought of what I can still do. It’s just you’re not wanted, not needed anymore. [#U]

Potentially further compounding a sense of exclusionary dynamics for female volunteers, participants expressed concern about what they felt were prevailing male-shaped strategic narratives of Special Constabulary “professionalisation” and “integration.” These exclusionary discourses were seen to be largely shaped by male Special Constables who aspired to be, and in terms of their personal circumstances and flexibility, were privileged to be able to progress towards being “exactly like a full-timer.” These narratives were felt to be reinforcing of an assimilationist ethos, reflecting desires to replicate full-time policing models over the alternative options of developing a wider range of flexible, adaptive, and more accessible volunteer engagement pathways (Bullock & Leeney, 2016; Callender et al., 2021).

What could be interpreted as an entrenched masculinist gaze within leadership structures (Prokos & Padavic, 2002), further exacerbated these barriers. Female participants expressed deep frustration at the celebratory framing of young (predominantly male) Special Constables who, less encumbered by caregiving or external career obligations, were able to commit extensive (some female Special Constables argued “excessive,” “unsafe” or “unhealthy”) volunteer hours. This valorisation of “hyper-availability,” as framed by Carrington et al. (2022, p. 3), reflects the way “ideals about time, availability, and commitment to work are another way masculinity is performed in policing.” Within the context of paid policing, female officers already encounter a greater imposition of “trade-offs” between career progression and domestic responsibilities (Alexander & Nowacki, 2022, p. 297). Whereas male policing careers, by contrast, are viewed as commonly remaining more insulated from the effects of caregiving and domestic obligations (Maume, 2018; Newton & Huppatz, 2020; Silvestri, 2007). Such gendered dynamics appear to be reflected as much, and indeed probably more so, in volunteer policing, where female Special Constables navigate a “triple trade-off” between their (often less flexible and lower paid) paid employment, their (typically far greater and less flexible) domestic care responsibilities, and their commitment to police volunteering, with the latter often “regretfully but inevitably” “relegated to third place”:

When my husband was away for five months [in his paid role] I couldn’t do shifts, I just didn’t have childcare as simple as that, and despite years of voluntary service they straightaway wanted rid of me. [#F]

There are time constraints, real pressures, that men often just don’t have. It’s hard to find the space and energy to keep going. Let’s just have yet another meeting is great, if you wife is back there at home with the kids. If you are the wife, it’s not so good. [#J]

Suggestive potential of a structurally exclusionary volunteering paradigm, participants highlighted a profound lack of diversity among women able to engage within the existing Special Constabulary model. The dominant profile was perceived as skewed towards younger individuals – typically in their late teens or early twenties – who were “white British,” physically fit, child-free, and often residing with parents or at university. Many female volunteer police careers were viewed as being of a transitional and instrumental nature, with many new female recruits – as was the case with male volunteers–being seen as being primarily motivated by “progressing” into paid policing careers, rather than being interested in sustaining a more enduring volunteer engagement (Britton et al., 2022). Some of the volunteer police leaders spoke of actively seeking to redress this imbalance:

Where we are attracting someone who is in her sixties, a grandma. Get the message out that we’re definitely not just here for middle class young white males, and that we are interested in females, and of all ages . . . I’ve purposefully moved away from that kind of blond hair, blue eyed, young sparkly female in our promotion materials. [#C]

More widely in policing, motherhood and childcare are seen as constituting a core material difference for women in terms of their volunteering and wider life contexts. Garcia (2021, p. 154) argues “we cannot deny the fact” of female pregnancy but that policing could reframe maternity as an opportunity, commit to and invest in best practice to avoid exclusionary practices, and minimise the career harms. From the perspectives shared in the interviews with female Special Constables, there appears to be a “basic failure of support,” “a total lack of communication,” flexibility and ambition within a passive, negative, unprioritised approach, particularly to volunteer officers and maternity:

There was nothing aimed at females coming back from maternity leave, how can we help you, how can we get you fit . . . in your thirties and a couple of months after giving birth, you can’t be expected to run at the same speed as a twenty year old male. Should have reasonable adaptation. [#G]

I’m not looking to be a special case. There just isn’t any reasonable adjustment, common sense, preparation, support, conversations, planning a way forward together. Things are different as a mum than they were before, financially, emotionally, time, commitments, different concerns about getting injured or worse. There was no phased return, adjusted expectations, different options. [#N]

Female Volunteers and Leadership

Participants viewed leadership within the Special Constabulary as dominated by men. Appointment processes for volunteer leaders promoted to ranks were seen as privileging assertiveness, visibility, presentism, and networking over other traits. Participants highlighted male-dominated leadership teams, exclusionary cultures, perceptions of tokenism, and scepticism towards female leadership ambition, all tending towards a reinforcement of systemic entrenched inequalities (Britton, 2023; Britton, Knight, et al., 2019; Callender et al., 2021). The male-dominated nature of leadership was felt to be an important constraint to the strategic development and innovation of the volunteer service, and to narrow thinking, lose talent, and skew leadership attention through a “male-only gaze.” Efforts to build solutions to address these structural impediments and to help make leadership roles more desirable, accessible and engaging for women were ultimately seen as key for the future sustainability and impact of volunteer policing as a whole (Britton, Knight, et al., 2019).

Participants described the organisation as “trapped” in a “legacy position,” where leadership succession remained predominantly male, with decision-makers “always tend[ing] to select people exactly like themselves, men, or even select their mates.” This exclusionary dynamic raised concerns about fairness, the feasibility of leadership expectations for women, and consequent perpetuations of a mostly male-dominated leadership paradigm. These structural impediments reflect the ongoing challenge of achieving gender parity within volunteer policing:

Visible female leadership is fundamental. Inspires others. [#R]

Women don’t have a strong presence. Don’t have the platform or the confidence to say that something won’t work for them. [#K]

They maybe leave because they don’t see any change, any hope of change. They don’t see in senior leaders anyone like them. [#V]

Participants reported a clear absence of structured, strategic efforts from leadership to tackle gender inequality, with few initiatives for mentoring, visible role models, career planning, or encouraging female applications – issues also highlighted in the literature on paid service promotion (Archbold & Hassell, 2009; Archbold & Schulz, 2008). Three key challenges emerged that compromised fairness and transparency in recruitment: (a) selection based on hours served rather than leadership skills or experience, which favoured visibility, presentism, flexibility, assertiveness, and networking (i.e., “getting stuck in” and “being liked by the regs”); (b) women’s reluctance to apply, consistent with findings on promotion barriers in paid policing (Drew & Saunders, 2020); and (c) a lack of long-term career paths for female volunteers, exacerbating the absence of “patterns of career-making” (Eberherr, 2018, p. 424) and essentially resulting in fewer women volunteering long-term to fill leadership roles.

There was strong consensus regarding entrenched dysfunctionalities within the resultant male-dominated volunteer leadership. Participants identified problems in senior leadership of a “wrong sort of stability,” “stagnation,” “tiredness,” “out of touch” leaders, “absent” leaders, and a sense of lead roles being “blocked” and leadership succession becoming “stuck.” With men in senior rank appointments who had been in the role for many years, and in some cases several decades. Alongside this sat perceptions of chronic struggles to fill first and second line manager volunteer positions (Special Sergeant, and Special Inspector, ranks), with many of the highly time-demanding roles being either unfilled, filled by volunteer officers with very little experience, or filled by individuals who were not being engaged and effective with those they support and supervise. These challenges were seen as both universal and gendered, with the excessive time commitments and stagnating leadership reinforcing a male-dominated “old boys’ club” culture, thereby further discouraging female participation in leadership:

She works. She is a young mum. She is a [volunteer Special] Sergeant. She has three phones. I’m physically in a meeting with her, in her volunteer role, seven o’clock at night, and her force phone has gone off three times, at that time of night. It is like almost another job. [#K]

He plays football with them . . . he was always going to be the one appointed. [#M]

The same men, with the same tired old opinions. That’s what it has been like, all the time since I first joined. [#D]

The female leadership space within the Special Constabulary was consistently described as challenging and often undermined by male colleagues. Female leaders were frequently positioned as the “leading woman,” seen as responsible for women and women’s issues, and expected to represent all female concerns, or relegated to what was perceived as “women’s work” such as administration, event organisation, and welfare. Often, female leaders faced further marginalisation in male-dominated leadership teams, epitomised by the label of “token” female, with women often dismissed as less credible than their male counterparts, not taken as seriously, or assumed to have been appointed due to their gender rather than their attributes (Archbold et al., 2010; Archbold & Schulz, 2008). The female Special Constables interviewed who were in leadership positions highlighted pervasive senses of exclusion, with female leaders struggling to navigate their roles, status, authority, and relationships within what were generally predominantly male teams. These dynamics reflect broader gendered power imbalances in policing and beyond, where women’s authority is frequently questioned and undermined (Acker, 1990, 1992):

It will always be discounted. I will be the only voice on the senior team seeing any of this as being an issue. [#D]

When she got that role, three male colleagues saw themselves in that role. [#T]

When you get a role at this rank, and you’re female, you are seen as only having got this role because you’re female. Sometimes seen as a quota. Especially if you’re young, and young in service. [#Q]

Some men don’t enjoy having female leaders. Loud and very clear. [#F]

At first, they think you’re there to do the admin and welfare jobs because you’re female. [#L]

Female leadership ambition was felt to be framed in a different, negative way compared to male colleagues, resonant of a wider literature on police female leadership of a “brass ceiling,” with patriarchal narratives requiring women to work harder, seeing them attract greater scrutiny, and being judged more harshly (cf. Schulz, 2004; Shelley et al., 2011; Shjarback & Todak, 2019):

If you’re a go-getter, and female, that is also sort of frowned upon. Females aren’t allowed to have these aspirations. [#O]

If you’re a career Special and you’re ambitious, people have an attitude about you as a female, they see you as quite aggressive. [#H]

While there are many parallels for female leadership in Special Constabularies and in policing more widely, volunteer police leadership is also materially different. Inclusivity is a particularly pertinent challenge for police organisations (Workman-Stark, 2017, p. 178) and especially with leaders who are both female and low-status, part-time volunteers. More broadly in policing, it has been argued that female leaders can bring unique strengths to policing (Alexander & Nowacki, 2022), commonly excelling in transformational rather than authoritarian styles, with greater ability to coach and nurture. Volunteer female leaders should also be recognised as bringing distinct, unique attributes such as external leadership and management experience, lived experiences, different and innovative thinking and vision, different appreciation and challenges of cultural norms and problematic cultural behaviours (Britton, Knight, et al., 2019):

At my rank, my seniority, it’s a strategic focus, long-term, bigger picture. This is not an operational role. Most senior male colleagues struggle with that. I bring a lot but I don’t think others see it, or are interested to be honest. [#W]

Female volunteer leaders in this study spoke of “disempowerment” (Clegg et al., 2006, p. 190), of “being sidelined,” “not being visible” and being “disrespected” as leaders, with them also experiencing pressure to “fit in,” “conform and subordinate.” This not only represented a lack of power in a traditional policing sense of operational command and control (although it did commonly include this) but also encompassed disempowerment to set agendas, and to contribute and shape strategic discussions.

Behaviours, Banter, and Belonging

Notwithstanding the practical challenges, exclusionary dynamics and marginalised professional identities reflected elsewhere in this paper, there is also much that female Special Constables perceived as being supportive and professional in their everyday volunteering relationships and policing team environments, contrasting to a degree with wider policing’s negative media portrayals. However, subtle exclusionary behaviours and pressures to conform to masculine norms, banter, and problematic conduct persisted, particularly for more junior officers. While some resisted these dynamics, adaptation remained the dominant strategy.

Interestingly, female Special Constable participants mostly judged their volunteering environment generally free of problematic male behaviours, sexism and misogyny in contrast to broader findings and perspectives within wider policing (Angiolini, 2024; Brown et al., 2021; Garcia, 2003; Prokos & Padavic, 2002) which identify patterns of misogynistic behaviours in male-dominated teams and sexually abusive and aggressive behaviours from some male officers. In addition to elements of highly sexualised “banter” including inappropriate, demeaning or sexualised comments about women, alongside publicised cases of male officers in online chat groups supportive of rape. Commonly contrasting this both with perceptions (or in some cases their own experiences) of a more negative past in policing, and what they often saw as the current unfair and negative rhetoric within media portrayals of policing:

We’ve come leaps and bounds. When I joined eight or nine years ago, there was far more slang used, there were lots of not nice names used for women, for neighbourhoods, most of that has now gone. Policing has become far more professional, but then something happens in the Met and we’re all tarred by it. [#C]

I don’t think it’s like it was in the seventies and eighties, where we had this blokey, sexist culture, nowadays there are female officers everywhere, in the regulars and the Special Constabulary, I don’t think the organisation is in anyway sexist anymore. [#I]

Consistent with wider challenges to a wholly negative characterisation of police occupational cultures, female Special Constables saw positives in the police front-line culture and behaviours. This included experiences of valued dimensions of teamwork, peer support, and camaraderie, all seen as key to officer wellbeing, as forming part of their initial attraction to joining the police, and reflecting the challenging work Special Constables undertake.

Banter? There are different sides of it. That sense of team. That sense of humour. The one thing you have got is having each other’s backs, and that plays out in lots of really beneficial, supportive ways too. [#Q]

Juxtaposed inconsistently with these optimistic progressive accounts were many descriptions of sexism, misogyny, and problematic male behaviours. There were currents of othering, avoidance, and denial across female Special Constables interviewed: “I haven’t experienced that myself, but . . ., ” “you have to cope and adapt . . ., ” “I’ve been lucky never to have that, but . . ., ” “I experienced some of that at first, but my team now is great.” Accounts of sexualised language, innuendo, nicknames, and of macho laddish behaviours were discussed in many interviews, alongside patterns of resistance from men to female command and leadership within the Special Constabulary:

I can’t imagine anyone saying that word out loud at [my paid] work. The male banter, as they call it, can be overwhelming, if you’re a female. [#P]

Recently, it was clear that someone didn’t like me because I was female, but it’s easier [for the policing organisation] to take me on as the problem, an attitude dare I say it of me being seen to need to “man up” as the more senior officer. This person does not like females in leadership roles, will not take any lead from them, but will do anything they can to subvert and twist what is going on. The attitude to me, is that “I’m just going to have to live with it.” [#E]

Female leaders are looked at differently, maybe just a lack of respect sometimes. And the snipes, the “she must be on her monthlies,” “there she is off on one again,” there isn’t malice always, but it is exhausting. Silly male behaviours. In a carrier, with all males, and one breaks wind loudly as a joke. [#G]

I’ve only come across a few obstructive officers where they don’t have respect for a female of rank. I’ve had my fair share of those men, but I, you know, I’m not one to let him bother me, yes I’ve got to deal with, yes they’ve put in a complaint about me, but hack on, I know it’s just because they like have no respect. [#A]

Interviews with female Special Constables revealed a recurring “if you want to belong, you have to go along” culture. Conforming to masculine norms was seen as something of a “survival mechanism.” This sentiment was particularly pronounced among newer female volunteer officers who felt pressure to “fit in,” “be one of the lads,” demonstrate camaraderie, and essentially adapt to or adopt a male-coded sense of humour. However, more senior women were perceived as having more agency to challenge these norms. Yet, their resistance was recognised as fraught with personal and collective consequences. The precarious position of volunteer officers, often occupying a peripheral role in policing, diminishes their value in three key ways: (a) reducing their ability to challenge unethical behaviours, (b) encouraging over-identification with male-centric policing norms, and (c) impeding their otherwise significant potential contribution to innovation and diversity in police culture (Britton et al., 2022; Britton & Knight, 2021). Such findings align with broader research on volunteer policing’s marginal position, where the need for professional belonging can compel officers to align with hegemonic, problematic norms (Britton, Knight, et al., 2019; Gill & Mawby, 1990), and where particularly for leaders the precarious nature of their roles, vulnerable to being structurally erased at a whim by senior paid-service officers (Britton, 2023; Britton, Knight, et al., 2019), can lead to a reluctance to speak out and to risk becoming seen as a problem of a troublemaker.

Views of participants varied on whether female Special Constables should adapt to or challenge masculine policing cultures. The dominant narrative leaned towards adaptation, particularly among newer, less empowered officers, who ‘learned to simultaneously navigate doing police work and gender’ (Clinkinbeard et al., 2020, p. 572). Despite some commitment to change, there was little collective sense of emerging professional confidence or resilience to embrace policeWOMAN positionalities that emphasise feminine identity over masculine occupational norms. Rather, problematic masculinities persisted, unchallenged, in an environment where male leadership continued to reinforce exclusionary dynamics (Bisom-Rapp, 2018; Brown et al., 2020):

Policing is constantly seeing things through male eyes . . . those worse things are still there, but don’t you think it just gets pushed underground? [#O]

If you don’t speak out, you’re part of the problem. But other male officers will then become wary, tend to keep a distance. [#R]

Language used in interviews regarding the responses to female volunteer officer’s challenges of paid police personnel, such as “rankles,” “distancing,” “ostracised,” of being “twisted,” “seen as the problem,” “targeted,” “not one of us,” all potentially speak to the concept of ressentiment (Loftus, 2009), or that those with threatened prototypical identities (Acker, 1992; Martin, 1990) tend to discriminate and harass those who threaten to disrupt or challenge their organisational status and hegemony.

Professional Identities as Police Officers, Volunteers, and Women

Female Special Constables reported challenges in forging empowered, positive professional identities and in developing rewarding, sustaining volunteer careers within a context of masculinist professional norms. These experiences revealed marginalised professional identities for female Special Constables, shaped by cultural factors that hinder their inclusion, engagement, empowerment, and development, and by organisational dynamics that obstruct professional growth and undermine the sustainability and depth of female volunteer involvement. While acknowledging the extent of these challenges, participants called for a radical reimagining of the volunteer role and a transformation of the professional identities of volunteer police:

The focus has been on getting them [female Special Constables] through the door, I think we need now to look at that ongoing experience and retention and development. [#V]

Female [volunteer] officers just aren’t visible to that male gaze. [#F]

The experiences of female Special Constables revealed the persistence of a malestream, exclusionary paradigm within volunteer police professional identities, operating across several interrelated dimensions. First, the construct for participants of what it means to be a Special Constable was dominated for them by what can be seen as masculinist occupational narratives, privileging “getting stuck in” – an ethos that emphasised “physicality,” “endurance,” and “use of force” intervention while systematically devaluing cognitive, relational, and communicative competencies. This aligns with literature which discusses the portrayal of policing’s broader cultural construction as high-risk, physically demanding men’s work (Shelley et al., 2011), rooted in narratives of danger (Garcia, 2003) and strength (Parsons & Jesilow, 2001). The archetype of the male volunteer officer, as reflected in participant narratives, as a “knight in shining armour,” “assertive,” “socially dominant,” “strong,” “protective,” “confident,” “first out of the car,” “in command,” risks perpetuating hierarchical gender schema, reinforcing patterns of inclusion and exclusion through deeply embedded organisational and relational routines (Eberherr, 2018):

Twenty-something males have that swaggering confidence, think they’re invincible, there are major problems with that . . . for me, my biggest asset is communication, most times with good communication you can diffuse most situations, it’s not all about strength and bravado. [#C]

I think I bring skill, experience, and expertise to what I do. I am good at talking to people. I am good at reading people. I am very good at de-escalating situations. Put one of these young boys we have into the same situations, and there’ll be a fight, and there’ll be an arrest. Put me in there, and we all go home, and we all go home safe. Women, especially older, mature women, bring so much to this. [#A]

Second, the enactment of occupational social identities within daily practice (Brekhus, 2020) structured credibility along rigid gendered lines, wherein failure to embody “the right stuff” – hesitation, self-doubt, or emotional expressivity – invited culturally punitive responses, including ostracisation from informal learning, career progression, formal training and development opportunities, team integration, and social networks. While participants acknowledged incremental progress, residual gendered stereotypes continued to inform task allocation and perceived role suitability (Lonsway, 2002; Miller, 1998; Rabe-Hemp, 2009), sustaining gendered hierarchies within volunteer policing:

I think the cultural influencing around gender starts very early and it’s pervasive and powerful. By time they’re grown-up adults and we’re getting them into the Special Constabulary, male or female, their attitudes about male and female roles and about gender and work, those are embedded, and they are very hard to shift. [#F]

Third, and relatedly, female Special Constables saw a highly specific construction of the Special Constabulary role in policing, primarily cast as traditional crime-fighting, incident responding officers and often specifically as an assisting officer amid the “rough and tumble,” “blood on the boots,” “pubs and domestics” of response nightshift policing (Britton, Callender, et al., 2019; Britton, Wolf, & Callender, 2019; Cheah et al., 2020). Those interviewed felt this did not reflect their rounded experience of what being a volunteer police officer actually involved for them, and particularly what it could and should involve. While it represented a dominant, constraining male narrative, it is not what the volunteer police role could or should be in the future:

It’s all about fights, and brawls, and drugs, and putting in doors, that’s probably actually less than one per cent of it. [#C]

It’s all the action man stuff. Fast cars. Tasers. Blue light. [#N]

We as Specials could do so much more but there’s that clique, male officers, that make it what they want to make it, what they want to do and enjoy. [#A]

Contrasting with the entrenched, traditionalist framing of the Special Constabulary as a supplementary force adhering to legacy policing models (Britton & Callender, 2018; Britton & Knight, 2016; Callender et al., 2021), many participants articulated a radical reimagining of the volunteer officer role–challenging male-shaped paradigms and advocating for broader, more flexible, and community-responsive contributions beyond the current rigid framework:

We need to see the opportunities. Women in their later thirties, forties, often children growing up, at different career stages, can have so much to give. Do they even think about it? Do we even think about them? [#U]

I see huge opportunities for what we could do, investigations, intelligence, prevention, community, but it’s going to need different leadership to what we’ve currently got. [#B]

Fourth, alongside the masculinist “crime-fighter” paradigm, an additional exclusionary discourse – rooted in notions of “not being a real one” – further marginalised female Special Constables. Participants articulated a dual form of social exclusion, stemming both from their gender and their non-regular status as unpaid officers. The pervasive use of “a Special” or “the Specials” in pejorative ways underscored policing’s tendency to construct difference as deficit, positioning those outside the prototypical in-group of paid, full-time officers as inherently less: less suitable, less experienced, less skilled, less available, less committed. This aligns with occupational rhetoric (Fine, 1996) that frames police professionalism in ways that remain non-inclusive to volunteers, and in many ways, particularly non-inclusive to female volunteer police:

I’m stood there. Literally stood in front of this [regular] sergeant. And he says “I think we need a police officer at this one.” I have been a police officer for over twenty years. Utterly unbelievable. [#I]

They’ll debate on the radio, “should we just send the Specials car.” [#L]

Such “othering,” as one participant described it, operates as a form of social-symbolic work (Lawrence & Phillips, 2019), reinforcing hegemonic institutional power dynamics. The reproduction of these hierarchies is embedded in identity-construction processes, wherein individual Special Constables and policing personnel internalise and perpetuate power relations (Knights & Willmott, 1989). These “patterns of cognitive attention and inattention” (Brekhus, 2020, p. 13) intersect across gender, volunteer status, and other attributes, necessitating an analytical shift beyond single identities as power inequality mechanisms (Zanoni & Jannsens, 2004) to fully comprehend the compounded exclusions shaping female volunteer officers’ experiences:

I’ve done this fifteen years, and I still get asked “When are you becoming a proper copper?” [#W]

I’d like to see more of those [older, female, Special Constables] because they can bring so much life experience to it. And that, you just can’t dismiss that, it’s so important. So you rock up to a domestic, and I’m crewed up with a twenty year old lad, and they don’t take a blind bit of notice despite him being the regular because he’s a twenty year old lad, like who do you think you are coming into my home, you’re no older than my son. So you do take the lead, and as experienced, older female Specials, that is one massive thing you do bring to the party. [#H]

Many interviewees expressed pessimism regarding the prospect of meaningful change, despite acknowledging broader shifts in policing and societal discourse – such as the ethics of care, evidence-based practice, and the increasing prominence of vulnerability and community-oriented models. Their scepticism aligns with research cautioning against “a syllogistic reading of change” for women in policing, where progress remains fragile and easily reversed (Brown & Silvestri, 2020, p. 471).